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RIDING GIANTS Send This Review to a Friend
The enormity of the waves that intrepid surfers seek out to hone and demonstrate their skills, often at the risk of their lives, is enough to make a non-surfer gape with awe. A person could get killed trying to ride waves like that. And some have. Stacy Peralta, co-writing a script with Sam George, has directed “Riding Giants,” a new documentary about the dare-devil sport that becomes a compulsion for those addicted to surfing as a way of life.
Riding 50 to 60–foot waves boggles the mind. The film captures famous surfers congregating and testing their prowess, impressing each other as well as themselves and anyone watching. Like other documentaries on the subject, “Riding Giants” has a high level of action and conveys the majesty as well as the risks. Tribute is paid in memory and in honor of surfers who met death in defeat by the ocean.
Interviews elicit talk about the challenges, the techniques and the dangers. Among those seen in action are Laird Hamilton, Jeff Clark, Greg Noll, Peter Mel, Dick Brewer, Derrick Doerner, Kelly Slater, to name several. The film does tend to get repetitious, not so much because of the flow of similar surfing shots, but because of all the hyperbole on the part of those lauding the sport. Speaking of the memories of the greatest surfing experiences, one person comments, “They’re engrained in your brain just like your child being born.” That’s a bit much, and there is more such excess.
I’ll settle for a dip in the ocean off a beach on Long Island or Cape Cod. But those fascinated with surfing can get a major fix by watching the daredevils paraded in this film travel to famous places where the waves are humongous with danger to match. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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