MovieChat Forums > Point Break (1991) Discussion > undercover

undercover

posted 4 years ago by daveyh (641)
4 replies | jump to latest

Some questions:
(1) Why would you send an instantly recognisable college football star to go undercover?
(2) Why was he undercover using his real name? Actually these 2 points may offset each other - no use using a false name if everyone knows you're Johnny Utah anyway!
(3) What exactly was the plan once he'd become accepted by a surf gang? How would he go from that to identifying the ex-presidents?
Don't forget, it was just implausably dumb luck that the first people he met were the people he was looking for....now, if the FBI had some intel that Bodhi and co might be the culprits and then sent Utah to try to infiltrate them, that would have made more sense.
(4) Before the big reveal, their best lead was Latigo Beach. Just staking out the beach and observing the behaviour of Warchild et al would have been enough to make them want to have a closer look. Which begs the question, what was the point of him learning to surf at all? And leads to the most important question:
(5) Why couldn't he just walk around with the surfboard under his arm and act stoned?

[–] BensGirl (590) 4 years ago

Hi.. just rewatched this the other night after not having seen it for many, many years. I really enjoyed this film. It’s fun and a really good cast. But, I also wondered about him using his real name. I can only assume that he was so well known that anyone would know who he was upon sight, so he just went with it. After his fall from glory(college football star), many ppl wouldn’t follow his career movements. The surf gang knew him immediately.
I then tried to watch the new Point Break the next night and turned it off after 35 minutes. I though it was completely unwatchable.. xo

[–] moviechatterer (16326) 4 years ago

1) as long as they dont know he's now FBI , it works
2) see 1
3) Once he was good friends , and trusted , they'd say "hey , we got a secret to share , bank robbery! want in?"
4) tight unit , tribal , etc blah blah
5) see 4

[–] daveyh (641) 4 years ago

Thanks for the replies. Moviechatterer, your answer to 3 only works though because the first group of surfers he started hanging round with just happened to be the ex-presidents.
I guess the plan was that before he tried to identify the ex-presidents, it would make it a lot easier if he was (1) a proficient surfer, (2) already part of a surfer gang, established on the surf scene etc and (3) already knew the lingo, the etiquette or whatever in order not to come across as an undercover cop. Whatever the plan was, it went disastrously wrong at Latigo Beach, when he snaked Bunker’s wave and had his card marked by the very group he was trying to get in with!

[–] moviechatterer (16326) 4 years ago

" just happened to be the ex-presidents. "

Yeah that was pretty handy, otherwise once he'd established it wasnt them he'd have to say
"sorry guys , I'm quitting the tight nit territorial unit to find another gang to surf with"

I'td be like quitting a biker gang to go to another , not gonna work really well.