It used to be how Hollywood did business. The studio would pair an established star with a rising ingenue to see if they have chemistry. If it worked, they’d make more films together.
When the young star got older, they’d pair them with a younger star, and the cycle would continue. They did it with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as well as Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn . They also did it in 1991’s Point Break with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves .
Swayze had already shown what he could do physically in Dirty Dancing and Road House. At the time, Reeves had only played burnouts in movies like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Parenthood , and had never been a proper leading man. In the Hollywood of old, they’d put those stars together, and we’d spend two hours waiting for them to kiss.
In Point Break , sadly, they never do. Reeves plays Johnny Utah , a former college football player who joins the FBI and begins stalking a group of wild-eyed surfers he believes might be California’s prolific bank robbers. Their leader, Bodhi (Swayze), is the philosophical type.
He speaks of living for “the ride” and liberating himself from societal expectations. He’s probably just an adrenaline junkie with delusions of grandeur, but once Johnny catches his first wave, he starts to buy into the mythology. He falls hard for the ocean and Bodhi.
On the page, maybe they’re just supposed to be kindred spirits or even good buddies, but with each actor possessing an inhe.
