Look, just because something is old does not make it great. And yet, as the Point Break remake surfed into theaters on Christmas Day 2015, I do not recall running across a single article or review that failed to refer to the 1991 original, which paired Patrick Swayze with Keanu Reeves, as “classic” — noun or adjective. “Classic” is a charged word — one that should be earned rightfully vs. bestowed automatically.

Perhaps Swayze’s too-young passing in 2009 is responsible for the revisionist love, because Kathryn Bigelow’s crime flick was neither well-reviewed nor a hit in its July ’91 bow. In fact, its $8 million opening placed it in fourth that weekend, behind James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood and a reissue of a then-30-year-old cartoon, Disney’s 101 Dalmatians.

So, old? Definitely. Classic? Hardly.

With that out of that way, back to the “new” Point Break …

… and wow, does it suck. Seven years after witnessing (if not encouraging) the death of his dumbass bike-riding buddy (Max Thieriot, House at the End of the Street), extreme-sports athlete Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey, The November Man) has reinvented himself as an FBI agent. When a group of rogue extreme-sports enthusiasts use their extreme-sports skills to pull off a series of extreme heists, Utah is the only one who convincingly can go deep, deep, deep, deep undercover. After all, he’s got the extreme-sports know-how, the sleeve tats and, of utmost importance, the looks of what would result from The Fast and the Furious’ Paul Walker impregnating Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam.

With the bureau’s blessing and armed with gun and surfboard, Utah takes off to infiltrate the gang, crack the case and bring ’em to justice … extreme justice. (Fun fact: According to one of the film’s posters, justice has no limit. Crime doesn’t, either, according to another. #themoreyouknow) Led by the Zen-ful Bodhi (Deliver Us from Evil’s Edgar Ramírez, too good an actor to endure haircuts as super-silly as he does here), the group operates under a Robin Hood agenda of wealth redistribution: Steal from the rich, make it rain on Third World countries. Bodhi’s crew members have names like Roach, Chowder, Grommet and Samsara, and welcome Utah into their bro-dude family with irony-free lines like, “What’s a motocross rider like you doing on a wave like that?” and “The only law that matters is gravity.”

Yes, Point Break is exactly that point-blank simpleminded, and its stupidity exhausts the viewer. Clearly cribbing more from the likes of Furious 7 than Bigelow’s big Break, it boasts some absolutely amazing stunt sequences that impart if not an adrenaline rush, then a solid contact high. Yet not even the best is worth suffering two hours plus of boneheaded dialogue and an unintentionally hilarious bumped-uglies subplot between Utah and eco-friendly earth child Samsara (Warm Bodies’ Teresa Palmer, suffering the further indignity of having her breasts pushed up to her neck). Invincible director Ericson Core (chosen for his extreme name?) is no Bigelow; while he can shoot leaping, jumping, running, falling and other action verbs all day, the man is forever crippled when it comes to mere walking and talking. —Rod Lott

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Before hitting it big (and inadvertently buying the farm) with The Crow, Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon, starred in the cheapo actioner Laser Mission, in which he plays American spy Michael Gold. He’s dispatched to encourage defection in Russian professor and laser weaponry expert Braun, played by Escape from New York-er Ernest Borgnine. (Unfortunately, at this point in Oscar winner Borgnine’s storied career, the Hollywood vet was believable only as a consumer of vast quantities of pastrami.)

As Prof. Braun disappears, the glittering Gold gets in deep with the Russian army and finds himself on the run, searching for the educator with the assistance of the prof’s daughter, Alissa, the blonde-haired, helium-voiced and breasts-forever-verging-on-escaping Debi Monahan (Wolfgang Petersen’s Shattered). Together, Michael and Alissa have a chase in a Volkswagen Microbus, shoot countless baddies with dead-on aim and bicker so much that the two are destined to become one (“That’s mister asshole to you!”).

Quite clearly, Lee possessed an easygoing charm that worked for him, although here, he acts largely through his tank top. Monahan has … well, I mentioned them already. For this action film saddled with a science-fiction title, director Beau Davis (Stickfighter) apparently could afford only one song, which they run into the ground: Knopfler’s “Mercenary Man.” (And sorry, but that’s David Knopfler, not Mark, so it’s not Dire Straits so much as just plain dire.) Faults and all, for five-and-10 adventure flicks that populate hundreds of public-domain DVD collections, you can’t do much better than Laser Mission. —Rod Lott

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The Towering Inferno, by the numbers:
• 138 stories, stands San Francisco’s brand-new Glass Tower
• 300 partygoers celebrating this massive erection — the world’s largest
• $2 million saved by going with electric wiring inferior to the architect’s specifications
• one fire caused as a result
• and nearly three hours of star-studded cheese piled eight Oscar nominations high! (Not to mention one crappy tie-in game for the Atari 2600 I nonetheless played endlessly in grade school.)

Directed by John Guillermin (King Kong ’76) and dedicated with a stone face and sans-serif typeface to our nation’s mighty firefighters, Inferno is producer Irwin Allen’s disasterpiece, outdoing his previous smash of The Poseidon Adventure. (As with that 1972 inverted enterprise, Allen entrusted himself to call the shots for Inferno’s “action sequences.”)

Charming as all fk, Paul Newman (The Sting) is the architect who goes above and beyond to save several soap-opera lives; meanwhile, a haircut-cursed Steve McQueen (Bullitt) is the fire chief who doesn’t show up until 45 minutes have passed. Ironically, the film’s first half is the best half, whereas once the blaze has spread to multiple floors and endangers the wealthy people cutting rugs in the penthouse, the rescue efforts play out twice as long as they should. And yet damned if I don’t tense up every time I watch Newman climb up and down an unraveled staircase railing, which hangs perilously over an open chasm.

The supporting cast reads like a Who’s Who of Airport passengers, even if some of them were not: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain and two Roberts, Vaughn and Wagner. Among the various demises, Jennifer Jones (Beat the Devil) definitely gets the most cruel kiss-off, bouncing off a corner of the building on her way down. Her character was on a date with a lonely old man (Fred Astaire, Ghost Story), who at the end, in his charred tuxedo, is clearly disappointed not to find her waiting to continue their courtship. As a consolation, the tower’s head of security (O.J. Simpson, double murderer) hands the man her cat. Symbolism! —Rod Lott

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One year after The Incredible Hulk Returns debuted to huge ratings, NBC sent the not-so-jolly green giant to court — basically in name only — for The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. Just as cheap, rushed and unintentionally jokey as its predecessor, this telefilm follow-up promoted star Bill Bixby to the director’s chair as well. (All those episodes of Wizards and Warriors paid off! Next stop: Blossom!)

Both Bixby and Lou Ferrigno remain in the roles they originated — Bruce David Banner and Hulk, respectively — in 1978 for CBS’ long-running Incredible Hulk TV series. Shortly after Trial convenes, Banner is arrested for Hulking out on the subway to defend a woman from two thugs. Being a dirt-poor drifter, Banner is assigned a free lawyer. (Think back to when you were last arrested; you were offered the same deal.) Representing Banner is a blind attorney-at-law named Matt Murdock (Rex Smith, Transformations), who, as luck would have it, is also a superhero, spending his nights as Daredevil.

Yet as was the case with the less-than-mighty Thor in Return, this Daredevil is not quite the one we know and love from the decades of Marvel Comics. It looks as if they forgot to make the Daredevil costume and didn’t realize it until the day of shooting, and just covered him in black pantyhose to compensate. Despite such handicaps, he still kicks butt, and leaves his victims with a dose of goody-two-shoes advice like, “Read a book!” (All that’s missing is the Peacock network’s “The More You Know” tag.)

The woman Banner defended is kidnapped by the thugs’ secret evil organization, headed up by the Kingpin (rotund Raiders of the Lost Ark fan fave John Rhys-Davies), who flies away at the end in some crazy jet boat, representing one of the worst optical effects seen on prime-time TV. Oh, and other than a dream sequence that sees Hulk co-creator Stan Lee as a bewildered juror, no trial takes place. —Rod Lott

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Penelope Spheeris’ Hollywood Vice Squad is not a sequel to Gary Sherman’s Vice Squad of four years prior. Guess no one bothered to tell Spheeris or Hollywood Vice Squad, because the movie sure plays like one, if lighter, fluffier and with 100 percent more Travolta! Sure, it’s Joey Travolta, yet the stat still stands.

After a title card promises we are about to see stories “based on actual cases” undertaken by “one of the most unusual police organizations in the country,” the film introduces its cop characters at a quick clip, almost as an afterthought. Its semblant spine is built upon a concerned Midwestern mom (Trish Van Devere, Messenger of Death) coming to Tinseltown to plea for the help of LAPD Capt. Jensen (Ronny Cox, Deliverance) in locating her daughter (The Princess Bride herself, Robin Wright, pre-Penn and in her mo-pic debut). Unbeknownst to Mom, the girl’s become a smack-addicted hooker under the employ of the town’s most fearsome pimp, logically portrayed by Frank Gorshin, aka The Riddler to TV’s Batman.

Meanwhile, the token black cop (Leon Isaac Kennedy, Penitentiary) goes undercover as a rival pimp; the token female cop (Carrie Fisher, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) is hungry for action and itching to bust her friendly neighborhood pornographer, whom she believes is using underage studs in his homemade productions; and the token Asian cop (Evan Kim, The Dead Pool) and the token Italian cop (the aforementioned Travolta, To the Limit) partner up and have all sorts of crazy adventures. There are many others, but these head the most prominent of seemingly a dozen subplots between which Spheeris’ film leaps.

Scenes of action — usually involving vehicular pursuit and inconsequential to story — hold Hollywood Vice Squad together like transparent tape. The seams of the episodic approach show, yet Spheeris (Wayne’s World) seems not to care. And nor do I, when the results are this entertaining. (Watch for the cameraman in the back of a car during an alleyway scuffle — you won’t have to watch very hard!) The quite-a-cast movie is as rough around the edges as her acclaimed Decline of Western Civilization trilogy of punk/metal documentaries and certainly as fascinated with colorful characters — some may call them “freaks” — for whom phrases like “only in Hollywood” were coined.

Set on the streets, so authentic you can smell them (starting with the Church of Scientology’s neon sign), the movie works as crime exploitation and as a time capsule of mid-1980s El Lay. Serving as markers are the Sunset Strip’s various theater marquees, luring patrons to see Rocky IV, Invasion U.S.A., Clue, Spies Like Us and Bodacious Ta-Tas. Only in Hollywood. —Rod Lott

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