Johnny Utah Breaks the Wrong Way
Coming up on the Men at the Movies podcast, we hit the waves with Point Break. The definition of a point break is where a wave breaks either right or left as it hits a part of land jutting out into the water. Every time Johnny’s life hits a point break, his life breaks in the wrong direction until he’s a man that’s lost his heart. What are you going to do when the land of life hits the wave of your journey? This is your wake up call, so join us as we discover God’s truth in this movie.
The Quotes
How does Johnny’s search for validation, love, belonging, and significance take him to such a dark place at the end?
Music has the power to reset the rhythms of our heart.
You can heal from a broken leg, but if you lose heart, that’s almost impossible to come back from.
What are you going to do when the land of life hits the wave of your journey?
This movie shows duty and desire as being binary. You either do your duty and lose everything you really want, or you follow your desires and lose who you really were.
The orientation of your heart matters more than your behavior.
Actions reveal what you truly believe about yourself, God, and the rest of the world.
Themes
At the end of the movie, Johnny Utah is a man who has lost heart. How did this happen, and how can we prevent the same fate?
Pappas: his mentor, “older brother” in the FBI, is a man who is resigned and has lost heart. Bodie actually fathers and teaches Johnny, sticks up for him, helps him belong.
Johnny is looking for belonging, not finding it in the FBI, but in this renegade surfer group.
Johnny and Bodie are men who not dangerous for good, but are dangerous for nothing.
Johnny’s center is based off of who is around him. He has no center line. So every time his life hits a point break, his life breaks a wrong direction.
Bodie said it was about finding freedom for the human spirit, but it was only about Bodie doing what Bodie wanted, being uncontrolled and unrestrained. But it lead to death.
For Johnny, duty and desire are binary. You either do your duty and restrain your desires, or you give your desires free reign and reject duty.
Resources
Keanu Reeves: “Utah is a total control freak and the ocean beats him up and challenges him. After a while everything becomes a game. He becomes as amoral as any criminal. He loses the difference between right and wrong.”
Roger Ebert: “They aren't men of action, but men of thought who choose action as a way of expressing their beliefs.”
Point break—The location where a wave breaks as it hits a point of land jutting out from the coastline.
“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” - Proverbs 14:12 (NKJV)
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” - Matthew 16:25 (ESV)
“Desire reveals design. Design reveals destiny.” - John Eldredge
Questions
What does dangerous mean? What does it look like?
Would you define yourself as a dangerous man? Why or why not?
What does it mean to be “dangerous for good?”
Where do you find your deepest connection with God?
What has been a point break in your life? Which way did your life break?
Who has turned into a Pappas around you? Have you turned into a Pappas?
What is the tension between duty and desire?
What are your desires, in the truest place of who you are?
What guys around you have been able to question the way that you’re breaking?
What do you orient your life to? What is your reference line for living?
More info
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Edited and mixed by Grayson Foster
Logo and episode templates by Ian Johnston
Audio quotes performed by Britt Mooney, Paul McDonald, and Tim Willard, taken from Epic (written by John Eldredge) and Song of Albion (written by Stephen Lawhead).
Southerly Change performed by Zane Dickinson, used under license from Shutterstock.
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