It is a grotesquely underused truth that long surfer hair is a valuable entity in action movies. With every movement, that long waterfall of follicles will fling with its own countermove, creating another plane of action. Like a many-limbed thing, hair will fling about and sling tiny punches.

POINT BREAK, Patrick Swayze, 1991, TM and ©20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved./Courtesy Everett Collection©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

Point Break (1991) gave us hair with energy. It was hair that flowed in the wind, it absorbed the waves, it collected sand, it played along, it tousled itself in a foot chase, it matted to foreheads with sweat and rain, it was a proof of action and of movement. Point Break (1991) had fantastic hair.

POINT BREAK, from left, Lori Petty, Keanu Reeves, 1991, TM and Copyright ©20th Century Fox Film Corp. All Rights Reserved./Courtesy Everett Collection©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

Point Break (2015) does not. In Point Break (2015), hair is covered up and combed through and done up and blown out and boring as balls. In the parlance, it has gone belly up.

(c)2015 Alcon Entertainment, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Point Break (1991) told us stories with hair, it spun us a long-ass yarn; the longer the strands, the grander the character development. Gary Busey’s tawny hair was too grown, gone to seed, clinging to a former self. John McGinley’s by-the-book FBI agent’s hair gleamed with gel and order. Even the “masks” on the ex-presidents showed plasticized hair that commented on the postured fakery of the American political system. Keanu Reeves’ flow as Johnny Utah was betwixt and between, not long enough to tuck behind his ear, not short enough for it to stay there on its own, it was all longing, all yearning to be two things at once, but not deciding, not committing, not devoting, not chopping off and not growing out.

POINT BREAK, Gary Busey, Keanu Reeves, John C. McGinley, 1991, TM and Copyright (c)20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved.©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett CollectionMost Popular

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Point Break (2015) gave its characters access to combs, even in the most inaccessible hinterlands.

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Point Break (1991) let Patrick Swayze as Bodhi have the hair of raw sunlight, all rays and natural heat and something that could burn you if you got too close, but warm you if you were close enough, and when it wasn’t there you missed it.

POINT BREAK, Patrick Swayze, 1991, TM and ©20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved./Courtesy Everett Collection©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

Point Break (2015) gives Bodhi a side part.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. PicturesMost Popular

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In Point Break (1991), the central couple has matching hair to show their love and an equal partnership. Similar to the important 1989 relationship between Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp or the mid-'90s relationship of Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow, the matching styles signaled a particular type of commitment and compatibility.

Point Break (2015) put its lead female in a hat that I can’t even talk about.

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Point Break (1991) wove us a dreadlock of background information about coastal Los Angeles. Surfers tossed cherubic curls. Beach bullies swung stringy braids (that's Anthony Kiedis, by the way), a fuzzy buzz-cut, a greasy Mohawk ponytail on a man named Warchild. Even a random gas station employee had a thick, free flow. And as everyone scrapped for territory or excitement or whatever makes us battle, the hair swung and flipped and whipped around with them.

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Point Break (2015) takes every opportunity to cover hair with an endless supply of woolen caps.

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Point Break (1991) told a story with hair. In the final scene, in the pouring rain, while Johnny Utah and Bodhi face off as their true selves, their hair is plastered to their faces. They are laid bare and vulnerable and elemental. They resolve things themselves. Then, a bunch of cops run up in dorky cop hats that are covered in shower caps and you realize what it means to try to shield yourself fruitlessly and what it means to face the music, or as Keanu Reeves amazingly said aloud in a Point Break press interview, “You learn a lot about yourself when the water jacks up.”

POINT BREAK US 1991 LARGO ENTERTAINMENT/C20TH FOX KEANU REEVES PATRICK SWAYZE Picture from the Ronald Grant Archive Date 1991, Photo by: Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection(10353378)Ronald Grant Archive / Mary Evans

Point Break (2015) sets up a significant surfing crime when Johnny Utah drops on Bodhi (i.e. takes his wave), when Bodhi had clear priority (i.e. claim) on the tube (i.e. the curvature of the water). With Point Break (1991) and Point Break (2015), let’s let the first one keep its ownership to this flow.

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