The Hurt Locker, an action drama about Army bomb technicians in Baghdad, is currently earning some of the most rapturous reviews of the year for its gripping suspense and uncompromising realism. Much of the praise is being reserved, quite rightly, for the film's director, and plenty of ink has been spilled about one particular fact: The director is a female lady woman person!

That's noteworthy all by itself, considering about 92% of American feature films are directed by men. What's really surprising, though, is that The Hurt Locker isn't a romantic comedy or set in a high school, like most female-directed movies are. It's set in Iraq in 2004. It has explosions. It has just one significant female character and she only has a few minutes of screen time. It's the kind of movie that's usually made by, you know, men.

The director, Kathryn Bigelow, is used to surprising people, though, and the focus of many of the articles written about her (a few good ones are here, here, and here) is how she's been going against the norm her whole career. Her film Strange Days had a strong female character (Angela Bassett) rescuing a hapless man (Ralph Fiennes). K-19: The Widowmaker, on the other hand, was all male, without a single female anywhere in the cast. And Bigelow's biggest box office hit, Point Break -- released 18 years ago this week, on July 12, 1991 -- is a cult favorite full of masculinity, testosterone, and good old-fashioned bromance.

It's a rather ridiculous movie in many respects, starring Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent named Johnny Utah (give me a break) who infiltrates a group of surfers in order to catch some bank robbers. There's skydiving, too, pretty much for no reason. The fact that a Keanu Reeves character initially has trouble passing himself off as a surfer is hilarious, as plausible as Jeff Foxworthy being unwelcome at a redneck convention. Reeves' performance in general is flat; Johnny Utah develops an unbreakable bond with Patrick Swayze's philosophical surfer after only two scenes; and Johnny has a knee injury that's as intermittent as it is debilitating.

But the film works well enough as breezy entertainment largely because of Bigelow's straightforward directing style, which gives action sequences room to breathe and doesn't rely on things blowing up. Roger Ebert has recently written about this expertise in his praise of The Hurt Locker, and it applies just as well to Point Break. The central chase sequence -- the one that starts with a bank robbery and ends with Johnny firing his gun into the air in frustration -- is suspenseful and thrilling the way few chase scenes are. The story elements are in place. We know the characters, we know what's at stake, and it's uncertain what the outcome will be. From a visual standpoint, Bigelow always lets us see who's doing what to whom, and where, and what distance they are from each other. Those are the basic elements of a good action scene, yet many directors ignore them -- or, more likely, never learned how to use them in the first place, instead believing that "action" means you film jittery things moving quickly and cut to a new shot every half-second. The difference between the two styles is like the difference between an orchestra playing a symphony and a gang of hobos beating on garbage cans.

Bigelow came to Point Break by a stroke of luck: The film's executive producer, James Cameron, was married to her at the time and knew she was looking for a new project. (That's not to imply it was nepotism alone that got her the job, just that most Hollywood deals are the result of knowing the right person at the right time. Cameron has a long history of working with the people he's married to, and marrying the people he's worked with.) Reeves was best known for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989); Swayze had become a huge star (and People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive") thanks to Dirty Dancing (1987) and Ghost (1990). Reeves and Swayze had both appeared in the 1986 hockey drama Youngblood, too, though Reeves' role was minor.

By the time Point Break was released, Bigelow and Cameron's two-year marriage was breaking up, and Cameron's own film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day opened a week before Bigelow's did. Point Break got middling reviews, with critics often admiring Bigelow's prowess while deriding the general goofiness of the plot, but it was a respectable box office hit, and it got three MTV Movie Award nominations. (Reeves won "Most Desirable Male," beating out fellow nominee Swayze.) Its combination of surfing, skydiving, and law enforcement seems like a transparent attempt to pander to a male audience, yet Bigelow treated the material seriously. The old adage that "there are no small parts, only small actors" applies to directors, too.

(Endnote: Point Break's popularity grew on home video, and the film eventually became a cult favorite. A stage show, Point Break Live!, has been an underground hit for several years in Los Angeles and elsewhere. At every show, the Johnny Utah character is played by someone plucked from the audience who reads his lines off cue cards, the idea being that this is the best way to approximate a Keanu Reeves performance. There are several video clips of the show on YouTube; here's the climactic skydiving scene.)

FROM THE TIME CAPSULE: When Point Break was released, 18 years ago this week, on July 12, 1991...

• It performed modestly at the box office, opening in fourth place with $8.5 million. Terminator 2: Judgment Day had opened the week before and was still dominant, with a reissue of Disney's 101 Dalmatians and newcomer Boyz N the Hood behind it. Point Break would eventually gross $43.2 million in the United States (about $73 million in today's dollars), making it a respectable but not overwhelming hit.

• On TV, things were dead because it was summertime. Court TV had launched on July 1 but wouldn't be especially useful until the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. China Beach and Amen were about to air their final episodes.

• Paula Abdul's "Rush Rush" was the top song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, as it had been for five weeks. It was followed by EMF's "Unbelievable" for a week, and then Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" for seven.

• Boris Yeltsin had just begun his five-year term as Russia' first elected president two days earlier. The summer was filled with dramatic changes in the Soviet Union, ending with its total collapse. The summer also saw the arrests of Jeffrey Dahmer for murder and Mike Tyson for rape.

• Erik Per Sullivan (Dewey on Malcolm in the Middle) was born on this very day. Three days later, game show host and actor Bert Convey would die, followed soon by the acclaimed Polish-born author Isaac Bashevis Singer.

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Eric's Time Capsule appears every Monday at Film.com. You can visit Eric at his website, where surfers don't rob banks.

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