John Milius's epic-scale treatment of three surfing buddies and their California Casual lifestyle is always pleasantly absurd, but its most side-splitting possibilities, in the mock-heroic mode, are not realized until the lugubriously nostalgic second half, when the three blond beachniks must face up to the problems of Aging, the Changing Times, and finally the mightiest set of waves ever to pound the West Coast. To heighten the movie's lofty tone, there's an anonymous narrator who serves as a sort of Homeric oral historian and poet ("Who knows where the wind comes from?" he muses in a philosophical moment. "Is it the breath of God?"); and there's a one-man Greek chorus in the person of a permanently retired and psychologically scarred surfer who now lives vicariously through the Younger Generation, who fashions their surfboards for them like the Vulcan of fiberglass, and who hypnotizes them by campfire light with a hair-raising tale of the Great Swell of '58. Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, Gary Busey, Lee Purcell, and Sam Melville. (1978) — Duncan Shepherd
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