Kathyn Bigelow’s cult action film is given a lifeless reboot as Luke Bracey goes deep undercover in a world of bikes,bank robberies and bad CGIHey: what if we could turn all those YouTube hits on extreme sports action into box office cash? What if we did a new version of Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 action film about a bank-robbing surfer gang, widened it to include loads of other extreme sports and made it pompously eco-conscious? These are the questions that evidently triggered this fantastically pointless remake, and stuffed with humourless and self-important machismo. Luke Bracey is Zoolanderishly edifying-looking,sporting plenty of transfer-tattoos and as supple and expressive as a surfboard. He plays Utah, the extreme-sports fanatic turned undercover FBI agent who infiltrates a super-icy crew of extreme-sportsy people who rob stuff and then ride their bikes off the top of skyscrapers and pull the ripcords on their parachutes. They steal money to give to the destitute (sort of) but are basically on a Zen mission to enact all this radical explain-off stuff as a tribute to capital-N Nature. Sheesh, or can’t they just organise a barn dance in aid of the RSPB? Édgar Ramrez plays the gang’s preening leader,motivating them to enact super-perilous stuff, the primary danger in some cases being that the digital effects are visible.
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Source: theguardian.com