Les dieux du surf

My boyfriend is a surfer and one night I rented this movie for us to watch. When he was out of the room I started it and as soon as he heard the waves crash he ran into the room. The movie is great because it has great action to keep the guys interested but there is an underlying romance between the extremely gorgeous Patrick Shane Dorian and a really pretty costar that makes it a good movie for couples to watch. My boyfriend was very appreciative and I'm sure any other guy would be too.

it is easy to criticize it. or define as a not the best movie. but it has a great virtue - the honesty. than - a kind of poetic image about a hobby. beautiful images. and something else who reminds a documentary. sure, it is not great or memorable. but it presents a not complicated story in correct manner. the passion, the death, the friendship, the small circle of few people, the personality of each, the advises for survive, the joy, pain and a kind of romanticism who can impress. a film about a risky sport and more than a hobby or competition. the good point is the portrait of a special form of solitude in middle of powerful solidarity. the strange form of hunting, adventure and madness. not the great script, not an extraordinary film. but, most important, a honest one.

The story and acting are laughable, but the surfing footage is ALL-TIME great!

My recommendation is to rent this DVD, turn off the sound, and put on some heavy, loud music. Then just FF to to the wave riding scenes and let your eyes feast on the 35mm footage of GIANT surf riding. It is absolutely mind-blowing. This film contains some of the greatest big wave surfing ever caught on film.

Don't miss the tow-in body-board riding of Mike 'the Wizard" Stewart. WOW! His '360' maneuver garnered the biggest cheers of the night at the opening showing of this film.

The acting in this movie is so bad that it is actually pretty funny. Shane Dorian is an amazing surfer, but maybe, just maybe, should stick to his day job. Not sure if Shane will be putting an Oscar on his mantle anytime soon. His opening line drew raucous laughter from a San Diego opening night movie crowd (and it was not supposed to be a funny line).

So, watch this movie with your favorite heavy music playing. Oh, try to watch it on a big screen.

If it weren't for the stunning footage of surfing in this film, it wouldn't even be worth writing about, let alone watching.

The writing, dialogue and story, is so ghastly, it's difficult to tell what Zalman King was thinking. Does he hate the sport? Did he realize that the highly polished, kinetically charged surfing sequences would have made a great documentary, and so he decided to show his contempt for them by slapping on empty-headed melodrama?

In the beginning there's some ludicrous high jinks in some African country (name of the country? I don't know -- New Orleans, I think, or maybe Hong Kong), followed by some scenes aboard a freighter (a freighter with no discernable purpose, manned by a crew of three), followed by a sequence at a surfer training camp (?), followed by scenes wherein one of the main characters gets struck down with a terrible sickness (yellow fever? small pox? heat cramps?), and then gets well. It ends with a bunch of surfing followed by a bunch of surfing.

The dialogue is hollowed-out, cheesy ersatz Kerouac, mostly from a fellow who talks into a tape recorder for some vague future purpose (Dennis Hopper in "The American Friend," anyone?)

On the upshot, if there was money spent on anything for "In God's Hands," it was the film stock and the cameras. Rarely has cinematography been this glisteningly, unabashedly beautiful, without a specific color scheme suited to the story (i.e. war movies, westerns). It rivals anything John Toll achieved in his photography for "The Thin Red Line." In the end, however, this film is reduced to being a ninety-six minute screen saver, and belongs in the same trash bin as Hype Williams' "Belly" and Claude Lelouche's "A Man and a Woman."

Tonight I though about watching the 9PM-movie. It was called "In God's Hands" and I were not really sure about it. I decided to do the usual "pre-sneak" ; reading a few IMDb reviews plus the average rating. The <5pts rating was speaking bad about the film from all the beginning. However, I though "I'll not let the mainstream opinion hold me down, I'll give this movie a shot". Next review was totally different from the first one. Someone wrote about it as an excellent film, but he/she understood why people had given it such bad review, though it should be watched by people who can relate to the story / scenario / lifestyle which the film is built on.

I got even more interested and eazed back in the bed, made my self comfortable and thus ready for watching the film. I saw it, really tensed to the television, even to excited to go get myself a glass of Coca-Cola during the commercials. Furthermore, now when I've seen and analyzed the film from A to Z, I can tell you, the film is really great. I couldn't find any Really wack actors, and the story worked fine with me. A few hidden "wisdom-quotes" made the film even more touching.

Go see this one!