Legendary surfer Laird Hamilton was never interested in entering surfing competitions, preferring to engage in "exploration of the unknown" as he puts it in this documentary, which chronicles Hamilton’s rise to surfing-world fame along with his sometimes controversial innovations in the sport. As filmmaker Rory Kennedy makes clear, Hamilton had plenty of competition--from himself. From the age of 7, Hamilton had ambitions to ride the biggest waves that the global ecosystem could produce, and as he grew into adulthood, those ambitions turned into single-minded obsessions with mastering "unrideable" waves. Laird’s innovations such as tow-in surfing--in which a jet ski tows the surfer into waves that are too big to reach by paddling--were maligned by purists at first. And his idea to invite publicity to his surf collective Strapped and its beloved "secret" Hawaiian surfing spot caused a dangerous overcrowding of the spot, where more than a few of the collective wound up with life-changing injuries. Kennedy never dwells too much on the surfer’s difficult personal issues (and there are a few), tending to cast Hamilton in an exaggeratedly deified light. But the real magnetic center of the film is Hamilton’s sheer talent, his preternatural ability to defy injury and age to preserve his status as the greatest living big-wave surfer. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Sandlin)
Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
(2017) 118 min. DVD: $24.98. MPI Home Video (avail. from most distributors). Volume 33, Issue 3
Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
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