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Movie review: ‘Highwater’ rides a beaut of a wave

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Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

If there’s such a thing as too much beauty in a film, the surfing documentary “Highwater” is guilty of it. Director-writer-narrator Dana Brown (“Step Into Liquid”), working with cinematographer Steve Matzinger, has crafted a compelling, thoroughly gorgeous look at late 2005’s Triple Crown of Surfing, the granddaddy of big wave championships, which is held yearly on Oahu’s famed North Shore.

Brown (son of “The Endless Summer” helmer Bruce Brown) passionately covers the 55-day, three-tiered event in all its athletic glory, incorporating awesome surfing footage, casual interviews with the contest’s many competitors (including top pros such as Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, Chelsea Georgeson and teen sensation Jon-Jon Florence), plus an ample overview of the surfing lifestyle and the North Shore zeitgeist into one vivid, impressively edited package.

There are no great emotional revelations about the fearless, free-spirited athletes profiled in the film, but these tanned-and-toned folks’ deep love of surfing and mostly cheerful demeanors prove enjoyably infectious (a few disabled surfers seen here couldn’t be more inspiring). On the other hand, though the sport’s darker aspects go generally unexplored, the drowning death of pro surfer Malik Joyeux, which occurred during this Triple Crown, offers a sobering reminder of the enormous risk lurking inside those powerful, captivating waves.

“Highwater.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

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