Patrick Swayze's Best Role Almost Killed Him

We recently ranked the movies of the late, great Patrick Swayze, and the film that came in at number 1 was Kathryn Bigelow's high-octane action pic "Point Break." It's hard to argue with that result: "Point Break" absolutely rules from beginning to end. In Bigelow's 1991 classic, Keanu Reeves plays an FBI agent who goes undercover as a surfer. Sounds silly, right? Well, stick with me. There's a gang of thrill-seeking surfers who moonlight as bank robbers, and Reeves figures he can get close to them by learning to surf. Okay, yes, it does sound silly. And yet, the movie absolutely rules and rips and rocks. 

Patrick Swayze plays Bodhi, the very zen leader of the bank robbers who forms a bond with Reeves' character (the homoerotic undertones are off the charts, folks). There's a lot to love about the film, and Swayze's performance is at the top of the list. As it turns out, filming the stunt-heavy "Point Break" was no easy feat for Swayze, who revealed he came close to dying multiple times while shooting the picture. In a bonus feature on the "Point Break" DVD (via Far Out Magazine), Swayze opened up about his near-death experiences while on the set of the film. 

There's a great skydiving sequence in "Point Break," and Swayze actually did his own stunts for the moment. As he reveals, he had to "battle insurance companies to get to do the skydiving in the movie." However, it wasn't the skydiving that nearly cost him his life. Instead, it was the surfing. As Swayze put it, he almost got his "brains pounded in by the biggest surf on this planet." 

He added: 

"I almost died six to ten times ... I thought I was outta here. I had this bone in my sternum that I almost injured being on much bigger waves than I had any business being on ... So we had to groove out my surfboard, build up my wetsuit to try and get me off that bone, but of course, it's not possible. Every time you try to turtle through a wave, it just slams you."

Thankfully, Swayze was able to survive the shoot, and the results speak for themselves. It might sound like hyperbole, but I firmly believe that "Point Break" is an action masterpiece, one worth revisiting again and again. And Swayze's very chill villain performance is part of what makes the movie so special, even if all that surfing almost cost him his life at the time.