Not another surf slasher film

This film casts a truer gaze on surfing than the parade of wave-slashing tricks common to most surf videos. Less is more as filmmaker Rick Way takes a well-observed look at one fine day on the waves -- two friends spurred on by a surf report and equipped with one tank of gas and permission to enter the private Bixby Ranch point breaks north of Santa Barbara.

For all the ease Mike Gee and Landon Earll display on their long boards, Way has gone even further to explain surfing’s special mystique.

He puts the contest into a larger context with allusions to Hemingway and bullfighting as he helps give the layman a window on the ordinary surfer’s art -- sizing up the waves from shore, paddling through crashing surf, watching for sets “like fighter pilots scanning the sky” and then “dropping in” ahead of a breaking wave.

-- Emmett Berg