This is one of those movies that would have you believe that surfing is a mystical endeavor, allowing one to heighten awareness and become closer to if not one with the godhead nature. Instead of the leisure sport of ski bums w/ surfboards don't work and hang at the beach. Which is cool, but that doesn't make it some ethereal vision-quest.
Lori Petty can always be counted on to irritate without doing any acting and this is no exception. I think she wants to be feisty, scrappy, empowering - those things. She's done much TV and it shows: she releases her emotions by staring at the camera. She has 3 modes: self-righteous indignation when she's wronged; self-righteous indignation when someone else is wronged; self-righteous indignation with a little girl voice when she's willing to have sex. All by herself she managed to ruin "League of their own". Here, could there have been worse choice for a love interest?
The real shame is the plot & script. Kathryn Bigelow is way better than this: K19, Near Dark, Strange Days - all brilliant. But she was involved w/ schlock-/ fluff-meister Cameron then and he wrote the script.
Overall this was intended to be a heart-pounding, blood-rushing, edge-o-ur-seat action fest. This is accomplished by having Reeves jump out of a plane without a parachute and catch up to the bad guy. Where they macho-talk about who will pull the ripcord until they're just a few-hundred feet over the ground. They survive of course.
It's about surfer bank robbers. FBI agent Busey has figured this out and says "They're surfers. Look at the evidence: they rob in summer only."
The robbers are meticulous and perfect in execution, except for the last job where the leader changes the plan without telling the rest of the gang and of course this allows them to be shot/ caught.
But it doesn't even end there: There's the no-parachute scene about; then Reeves tracks his man all over; then there's a confrontation where he lets him go to die in some big weather.