Big Wednesday

John Milius charts a decade of social change as three buddies use the sport of surfing as a personal touchstone for their lives while growing up in the turbulent 1960s. Irresponsible hot-dogging legend Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent), serious and stable Jack (William Katt), and mad misfit Leroy, aka "Masochist" (Gary Busey), are teenage surf bums in 1963, living at the beach in a perpetual summer under the sway of surfboard maker Bear (Sam Melville), who is a guru, mentor, and keeper of the lore. But the times they are a changin’ and the boys grow up in the shadow of Vietnam while adulthood pushes them into hard decisions. Milius mixes the nostalgia of American Graffiti with the reverence of a John Ford cavalry drama, as surfing becomes a kind of spiritual quest spoken of in awed mythic tones and photographed with the epic grandeur of a rite of passage in this 1978 coming-of-age drama. Milius’s heavy-handed direction sometimes slows the film, but the director’s fans will appreciate his macho stylings and philosophical musings, and surfing buffs will love the spectacular surfing footage, including the dazzling stylings of world champion Gerry Lopez. Lee Purcell, Patti D’Arbanville, Barbara Hale, and Robert Englund costar, with Milius himself in a cameo selling marijuana in Tijuana. Making its Blu-ray debut, extras include audio commentary by Milius and a retrospective featurette. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)