...the source for all things Cillian Murphy

Home --> Press --> Reviews --> Here

Waveriders

Channel 4

April 2008

By Richard Luck

Filmmaker Joel Conroy documents Ireland's surprising but sizeable contribution to the sport of surfing

George Freeth was a remarkable man. A gifted swimmer, Freeth popularised water polo and institutionalised the lifesaving tradition that one David Hasselhoff would celebrate on Baywatch. Single-handedly responsible for saving nine Asian fishermen one bracing evening in 1909, he's acknowledged as the man who not only brought surfing back from extinction but introduced it to mainland America.

Freeth's astonishing if unsung contribution to water sports provides the high points of Waveriders, a diverting documentary that reminds the world that surfing, that most exotic of sports, has its origins in the Emerald Isle. Not only that, but the cold waters of Ireland's West Coast are now considered some of the finest surfing locations on the planet&mdasha fact borne out by the proliferation of Irish surfers and the vast number of pros visiting the country in search of the very biggest of Wednesdays.

If you're familiar with Stacy Peralta's excellent Riding Giants, you won't be terribly shocked by director Joel Conroy's approach to his subject. Talking heads, action shots, art work recreations—Conroy employs many of the same techniques as the award-winning creator of Dogtown And Z-Boys. What's different here however is the fact that the remarkable feats aren't taking place off the coast of Hawaii or California—no, these wet heads are risking their lives in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.

Narrated by the mellifluous Cillian Murphy, Conroy conjures up further freshness by raiding the Irish songbook and the Hibernian book of verse. Not that Oscar Wilde and U2 know a tremendous amount about hanging ten, but the references to WB Yeats, Thin Lizzy and Co. ensure that this surf movie couldn't possibly be confused with The Endless Summer or The Super Session.

There are of course some people for whom board walkers will forever be egotists obsessed with an utterly pointless activity. There's an air about Waveriders that could even convert ardent surf haters such as Quentin Tarantino (a man who once claimed that John Milius's Big Wednesday "is such a good movie, surfers don't deserve it").

From the legendary Kelly Slater succumbing to the charms of Ireland to the entrepreneurial Malloy brothers rediscovering their soul, Joel Conroy is clearly on speaking terms with the Blarney Stone. And even those who hate to see the words 'sport' and 'extreme' rubbing shoulders might find themselves quietly impressed when they see the buttock-clenching lengths some people go to in the name of the craic.