Riding Giants Movie Review:


If there was one movie I NEEDED to see at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival then it was this, director Stacey Peralta’s sophomore follow up to Dogtown and Z Boyz. That movie followed the origins of the skateboarding craze that grew out of its surfing origins back in the 60’s, with Riding Giants he goes back and has a look at that culture.

And what a beautiful exhilarating look it is too, I’ve watched surfing movies before, generally on the small screen, but seeing such amazing surf up on the big screen really does amplify the scale, awe and achievement that these pioneers had in breaking boundaries with their sport.

Peralta starts out with buzzing us through 1,000 years of surfing history in two minutes, which could be cheesy, but no it works well. Especially including the revelation that surfing was banned, by the Calvinists, in the late 1800’s because of the lack of clothes being worn on the beach! He then takes us through to the 50’s and 60’s focusing on the big wave revival picking out key characters who broke new waves, such as the enigmatic, and still fiery, Greg Noll who does a lot of the on screen talking.

We then move onto the Californian scene in the early 90’s and meet Jeff Clark who rode some of the most dangerous surfing waves alone for well over a decade. Finally we meet Laird Hamilton, who created another paradigm shift in surfing when he reduced the size of surfboards and was towed out to previously unreachable and UNRIDABLE waves of nearly SIXTY FEET high and successfully rode them - the footage shown on this is just awe inspiring!

A lot of the techniques that Peralta used so successfully in Dogtown and Z Boys such as zooming in and out of still photographs to create almost moving pictures is on display here, and although stylistically this is pretty much Dogtown and Z Boyz go surfing, with footage as gorgeous as this it’s not much of a problem.

There are some problems here that Dogtown didn’t have, such as the obvious commercial link up with Quicksilver. At the start of the movie, Peralta revels in the counter-culture that surrounded surfing in the 50’s and 60’s, but when we get to the 90’s NO mention is made of the big business element of the sport. Laird Hamilton is surely a millionaire, but we never find this out. If Peralta had addressed this, nay even mentioned this then Riding Giants could easily be one of the greatest surfing movies ever, right up alongside Big Wednesday.

Gary Gray

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