Delayed Reaction: Dawn Patrol

The Pitch: Point Break should've been darker and edgier.

A surfer gets revenge after the murder of his brother.

I like to go off book sometimes. I have a pretty intricate list of movies that I work off. It's a mix of recommendations from friends or podcasts, online lists of classic movies, directors I admire, and a bunch of other considerations. I'm pretty pleased with the selection of movies I end up watching. I do like to pick something completely random on occasion on the off chance that I'll discover some hidden gem. It normally doesn't work out. Dawn Patrol was one of this random picks. The most I can point to for why I picked it is that it has Kim Matula in it. She was pretty forgettable in a bad season of UnREAL, but I liked her on LA to Vegas. She doesn't have a long filmography outside of her 900 episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful, so seeing her in something else had me a little curious. That's about all I can point to though. A totally earnest Scott Eastwood certainly wasn't a selling point. Rita Wilson hasn't been given a good film role in years.

Dawn Patrol is really bad. I think if you are a fan of this kind of brooding revenge drama with pretty people, it's harmless enough. Otherwise, it's bad. Scott Eastwood is at his best when he's in on the joke, winking at the camera either directly or indirectly. He can't play it straight in a movie that's playing everything straight too. All the older actors in the film have the hesitation of someone who doesn't trust the director with a committed performance. Like, if Rita Wilson gave her role 110%, one of her scenes could've been turned into another "crying Dawson" meme. She holds back because the movie isn't good enough to risk it. The less I say about Kim Matula the better. She's given a generic sex-bomb role. I mean, she looks good in a bathing suit, but there's not much more to the role beyond looking attractive and a few melodramatic lines. No one came out of this looking better.

I mentally checked out of this pretty early, so it's hard for me to pull out specific things about the movie to talk about. If you like people talking about surfing as a metaphor for life, then you're in luck. Most of the movie is told in flashbacks. In the film's present, Eastwood is some kind of soldier telling a Muslim woman his story. I'll be honest, I wasn't paying attention at all by the time they explain all that. He joins the army to get away from the drama in his home life. It was pretty dumb.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend