He fabricates a family tragedy to persuade orphaned surfer and restaurant waitress Tyler to teach him to surf, after she saves him from drowning during his first attempt.

Following a clue retrieved by analyzing toxins found in the hair of one of the bank robbers, Utah and Pappas lead an FBI raid on another gang of surfers, resulting in the deaths of two of them.

The raid inadvertently ruins a DEA undercover operation, as those surfers were wanted for separate charges regarding drug dealing, and they are determined not to be the Ex-Presidents.

After the jump, Bodhi reveals that he knows Utah is an FBI agent and has arranged for his friend Rosie, a non-surfing thug, to hold Tyler hostage to blackmail him into assisting the Ex-Presidents with their last bank robbery of the summer.

Bodhi meets with Rosie who frees Tyler; with Roach dead from his wounds, the two men flee the country and go their separate ways.

Nine months later, Utah tracks Bodhi to Bells Beach in Victoria, Australia, where a record-breaking storm is producing lethal waves.

At the time, executive producer James Cameron was married to director Kathryn Bigelow, who had just completed Blue Steel and was looking for her next project.

[6] Only W. Peter Iliff is credited for the screenplay, but Cameron has said that he did a considerable amount of writing with Bigelow for the final film, helping to establish a better plot flow.

[6] The studio felt that this title said very little about surfing and by the time Patrick Swayze was cast, the film had been renamed Riders on the Storm after the famous song by The Doors.

"[6] Two months before filming, Lori Petty, Reeves and Swayze trained with former world-class professional surfer Dennis Jarvis on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

[17] A few of the action scenes were shot from the POV of the characters and Bigelow along with the cinematographer devised an innovative light weight pogo cam to create a sense of immersion among the audience.

[18] Parts of the film were shot at Lake Powell in Utah, Wheeler and Ecola State Park in Oregon, and Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica, Venice, and Fox Hills Mall in California.

This edition was limited to 2,000 units and features 65 minutes of score with liner notes by Dan Goldwasser that incorporate comments from both Bigelow and Isham.

The website's critics consensus reads: "Absurd, over-the-top, and often wildly entertaining, Point Break is here to show you that the human spirit is still alive.

[24] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, and wrote: "Bigelow is an interesting director for this material.

"[26] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C+" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote: "Point Break makes those of us who don't spend our lives searching for the ultimate physical rush feel like second-class citizens.

"[27] In his review for The Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote: "A lot of what Bigelow puts up on the screen bypasses the brain altogether, plugging directly into our viscera, our gut.

"[28] Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers wrote: "Bigelow can't keep the film from drowning in a sea of surf-speak.

"[29] USA Today gave the film two out of four stars, and Mike Clark wrote: "Its purely visceral material (surf sounds, skydiving stunt work, a tough indoor shootout midway through) are first-rate.

"[30] Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote: "So how do you rate a stunningly made film whose plot buys so blithely into macho mysticism that it threatens to turn into an endless bummer?

Entertainment Weekly gave it a "B" rating and wrote: "The making-of docs (at their best discussing Swayze's extracurricular skydiving—that really is him doing the Adios, amigo fall) will leave you hanging.

"[34] In 2021, Keith Duggan, reflecting on Point Break 30 years later, wrote in the Irish Times: For more than any other film of that time, Point Break seemed to announce what lay ahead in the grungy, baggy, anything goes 1990s, with greed and anti-capitalist forces clashing, America emitting its last lion’s roar of unfettered optimism and the quest for one’s precious spirit moving from the remnants of the hippy era into a multi-billion health and spirituality industry...Yup, standing on a stormy beach in 1991, old Bodhi had a pretty clear view of the next three decades.

[38] The film inspired a piece of cult theater, Point Break Live!, in which the role of Johnny Utah is played by an audience member chosen by popular acclamation after a brief audition.