Bustin’ Down the Door

Edward Norton narrates this enlightening but repetitive documentary about the origins of professional surfing, as champion surfers Shaun Tomson, Ian Cairns, Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew and Mark Richards tell how they came to Hawaii’s vaunted North Shore with a charismatic surfing style and promulgated it with brash statements in the press in an effort to create jobs for themselves. At the halfway point, the film takes an astonishing turn: Suddenly a villain arises, there are beatings and vandalism, and the ideals of the sport’s doe-eyed, tow-headed founders are threatened, along with their lives. The introduction of this tension at the 40-minute mark takes director Jeremy Gosch’s recitation of the beginnings of today’s multi-billion-dollar surfing industry to a dramatic level, and he does it with only archival talking-head interviews and footage from the mid-’70s. Awesome, dude.

Shelf Talk: More than 2 million surfers ride the waves these days, thanks to the efforts of the principals in this film. Screen Media will garner attention with widespread print, radio and online consumer advertising, but Bustin’ Down the Door will still require a push as the title and box art do not immediately convey what’s on the disc. There are precedents: Previous surfing titles Step Into Liquid (2003) and Riding Giants (2004) managed to find audiences beyond the surfing crowd.