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This is a beachfront movie staring Matthew McConaughey and this is the first film from his own production company. The setting is the beautiful West Coast with its combination of beaching and surfing community. Matthew’s character, Steve Addington is a surfing legend, who is managed in everything including his finances by a character who is played by Woody Harrelson as a shoot from the hip roadster Steve combines his love of the surf and the body beautiful with a steady consumption of cannabis and a disdain from for the corporate intrusions into marketing the sport in studio formats. A conflict forms for Steve when he is getting low on cash and a big corporate sponsor wants him to do a special surfers segment in the studio but he is balking at their increasingly high pressure tactics despite a nice cash payoff available for doing this. They do need him because of his near legendary status on the coast. The movie rolls in a bevy of beauties that seem to appreciate Steve at his level and don’t need him to change. The humor is at times good and at times maybe a bit too slapstick in the earlier portions of the film. A few of these beauties approach him rather directly and or with a slight obliqueness with the direct intentions to be quickly revealed and acted upon. They aren't going to back away for sure. But they are certainly pleasing to the eye and to the camera, just what you look for at the beach in the summer and in a surfing movie. While the movie initially doesn’t come across as having profound elements, as it progresses in moves into deeper moments just as the surfer might move into deeper seas. There is a sudden famine of surf able waves to where the sea is silent and not delivering and it becomes days and days on end. Steve calls a fast off women and the weed, as he feels in his spirit, ” I need a wave.” and he begins to commune with nature, almost trying to cajole the seas from his spirit into bringing forth the waves. In the meantime, an East Coast Sharpie, decides to join in the West coast scene for now. Her name is Danni and her character is played nicely by Alexa Gilmore, who is a bit more of a mature in the realm of thought person who also sees Steve with a somewhat different eye. He affectionately calls her “ East Coast”, but this also issues as a challenge to her entree into this new world. And then the movie itself sees Steve with a somewhat different eye and we see that his motivations are not just as a stand alone purist who doesn’t want to commercialize his image for quick cash payoffs but more towards someone who is holding on to his love of nature and his personal space in it and in retaining and cherishing his awe for it and Danni’s view of him seems to parallel this now revealing side of his persona. The search for the wave brings in a good scenery road trip down to Mexico as the coasts are scoured for the sought after wave as the days become increasingly baron of any signs of a change in the drought. A particularly riveting scene where there is no real dialogue is when Stave and his friends see the giant waves rolling in and their eyes go from these waves to each other and a bit more to Steve in a combination of wonder and the pause between them as to whether these waves are within range of something that they should even attempt and whether Stave will give the go ahead sign to do so. This is a good movie especially for the winter season if you have been frozen out of the real life beach scenes like this.
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movies, beach, surfing, Matthew McConaughey,
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