The Drifter

It's suspect to call The Drifter(2009,Taylor Steele)a surf movie,it's more about pro-surfer Rob Machado's personal experiences,than surfing itself.

We fallow Rob in a travel to Indonesia,seeking for inner peace,answers and of course surfing.Tired of his public life,Rob decides to disappear and live like a homeless,just camping on desert spots and surfing on non crowded beaches.

The movie describes really good the relationship between man and nature,Rob narrates his feelings and discoveries,and see himself more and more into the wild life,totally isolated from civilization,just surfing and writing.

The surfing scenes won't disappoint the surfers viewers, beautiful scenes were shots,while Machado shows awesome performances in nice tube riding sessions.

With a little bit of George Greenough's 'Crystal Voyager' inspiration, The Drifter seems like 'Into The Wild mixed with surfing.

A little masterpiece,sometimes melancholic,with lovely light comedy scenes,and first class soul surfing. Deserves to be on the same league of 'Endless Summer and Riding Giants, and can be appreciated by not only Rob or Surf fans.

Pretty disappointing I have to say. Rob Machado strikes me as being a pretty interesting type of character, but this almost hour long film, doesn't reveal much about him at all, except he's a tremendously talented surfer, which we all knew anyway.

There are some great surfing sequences, but most seemed slightly out of focus. I can see crisper, cleaner images any day on any site. Just disappointing to see Rob ripping some extra nice Desert Point, but not in total focus,

His overlaying narration of the film I hate to say is pretty dull. Yes, Indonesia, doesn't feel like California and after awhile he thinks he needs to move on, to the next spot, but so what? You'd really find out more about him through any serious sort of interview in a magazine or on any decent surfing website.

The Drifter is not a bad title, because story and camera wise, things seem to drift all over the place. I know Taylor Steele the director came on board late to the project, but even he seems unable to have been able to fashion anything really memorable from the material and set-up he was given.

The 4 stars are mainly for the nice shots in the movie, the great scenery and the music.

There is however no real substance, in fact I'd argue the movie would have been better without any dialogue as it's really shallow and distracts from the strong points.

This is definitely not Into the Wild mixed with a surf movie as another review suggested as the main character doesn't venture off the beaten path, nor has a likable personality or otherwise higher ulterior motive to his travels. He is rude and disrespectful to locals, which could be understandable but the manner in which it is done shows he has no real interest in them or shame in being rude. Rather then coming across as a weary, experienced traveler bored with the same question he comes across as a spoiled and blase surfer.