Big Wednesday
Quentin
Tarantino once said that surfers don't deserve Big Wednesday.
Perhaps this was a hangover from his days working in a
California video shop where the local beach crowd preferred Chevy
Chase to Sonny Chiba and derided the geek behind the counter with
cries of "Cherry Boy!".
 Whatever the reason, he's partly right: this rites-of-passage
story is not just for surfers.
Director John Milius had previously written such right-wing cop
efforts as Magnum Force and, un-credited, Robert Shaw's USS
Indianapolis monologue from Jaws.
Milius would go on to
write and direct the knuckle-headed Conan The Barbarian,
but Big Wednesday is - despite the surfing theme - far from
a grab-bag of macho clichés.
The action starts in 1962, when life is a series of
wave-riding, hot girls and cold beers for three California buddies
Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent), Leroy (Gary Busey) and Jack (William
Katt). A chaotic house party caps a perfect summer, though a
disastrous road trip to Mexico hints that the bubble of innocent
fun can be violently burst at any time.
 Inevitably
the good times are threatened as Vietnam kicks into gear - the
scene where they try and avoid the draft by pretending to be gay,
insane, crippled or a raving Nazi is fantastic - but Jack plays it
straight and enlists, enjoying a final expression session on his
board before leaving to do his duty.
Matt, the local hero, struggles with fatherhood and sinks into
alcoholism while Leroy travels to Hawaii and makes a name for
himself as a serious surfer.
The passing of time sees one of their friends killed in Vietnam
and local board shop owner, beach guru Bear (Sam Melville) ruined
and drunk.
Finally, 12 years on from when they were the wide-eyed rulers
of the break, Leroy, Jack and Matt reunite to ride a jaw-droppingly
massive swell - the once-in-a-lifetime 'Big Wednesday' of the
title - proving that whatever they've done on shore, in the water
they remain the masters and, ultimately, friends.
The surfing is beautifully shot, without the disorienting jump cuts
that Hollywood now uses to make things look even more exciting
than they already are!
 Gary Busey would go onto a career of playing steely-eyed
psychos before a troubled personal life saw him join Jan-Michael
Vincent - better known as Airwolf''s Stringfellow Hawk - as
a regular fixture in the National Enquirer.
Katt, meanwhile, disappeared to make the sort of late night
films Channel 5 puts on when they've run out of soft porn and
baseball. But whatever depths their careers plumb, at least
they'll always have a genuine classic on their CV.
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