Riding Giants (Special Edition)

Living in the Sonoran desert, it was thrilling just to see water for a few hours.

This is a great documentary. It would be hard to imagine a film that more effectively captures the soul of surfing. Brilliant on all levels.

Having grown up on the coast of California during the 60's & 70's, this film/documentary has brought back many good memories of my youth & its culture. Riding Giants is both, inspirational & entertaining viewing for all ages.
The footage & soundtracks work well together. From Erik Satie to Alice in Chains; it's a visual & audio masterpiece - especially for music lovers (I wish the entire soundtrack was available on Cd).
Since watching Riding Giants, It's given me a better appreciation & insight into the world of surfing; not only as a way of life, but as a religion too.
The film explores the history of Big Wave Surfing, past & present, and is presented with humor, truth, & some insanity, that comes straight from the heart & soul; as Greg Noll, Jeff Clark, Laird Hamilton share their stories.
Marooned on a dry & dusty mountain in Central Queensland Australia, 'Riding Giants' is a tonic for the mind & spirit, especially for the ocean lover(like me).
Thanks to Stacy Peralta for his fine work - taking us on this journey of an era 'gone but not forgotten'. I give this 5 stars plus (ignore the scale).
KG Goodwin Queensland Australia

While few of us have the balls to ride these monster waves, it's great to listen to these purists talk about what drives them. The film gives great insight into what makes us all tick.

I haven't been this moved by a documentary film in a long time...probably not since The Thin Blue Line, which is obviously a completely different film but at the same quality. Surfing as a deep, metaphysical quest? Obviously that's not the take you automatically have about this subject matter, but the surfer experience does seem to come down to that. Surprising way of life they've embraced. Great stuff.

First off, I loved Stacy Peralta's DOGTOWN AND THE Z BOYS so much, I'm pretty much willing to watch anything he makes. And RIDING GIANTS was certainly worth my time. Admittedly, I'm a southern California native who drove a VW surfer van for 20 years, so this type of material has a nostalgic appeal to me that may blind me to its faults.

So to avoid just praising this film for its mind-blowing footage and lively interviews, let me mention as an aside that RIDING GIANTS does not delve very deeply into the "man-child" aspects of the surfing lifestyle. It's all about catching some waves and hanging out on the sand, and I can dig that as much as the next "haole" (Hawaiian for "cheesefoot"). BUT this is a less than attractive characteristic to find in adults. Riding the big waves can result in personality casualties, as well as "real" ones, as we learn in film's feature on the Mavericks coastline near Santa Cruz.

SIDELIGHTS: This film has such high production quality, its brief, painfully amateurish animated portions stick out like a sore thumb. And there is arguably a certain sameness to surfing footage after a while. My wife (who has suffered through her share of surfer movies), did turn to me a couple of times to ask, "Are you SURE we haven't seen this before?" We hadn't. It just seemed like we had.