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Stacy Peralta has made a career out of skateboarding and then some. In the ’70s, he and Tony Alva were the superstars that Tony Hawk is today. In the ’80s, he founded the skate company that launched Hawk, and in 2003, he made Dogtown and Z-Boys, the documentary about how he, Alva, and other longhairs from the squalid Venice surf scene invented the ’vert (half-pipe) style of boarding. In this re-enactment, director Catherine Hardwicke takes Peralta’s ’70s nostalgia (he penned the script) and blows it into a rock-star epic full of triumph and pratfalls. The film begins on wobbly legs, but by the end it’s soaring, not on the daredevil antics but on the bond among four friends torn apart by fame. Hardwicke, who stirred up controversy with Thirteen, probes areas that Peralta’s wistful documentary was too smug or too fearful to explore, notably Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch in a smashmouth performance), the heart of the quartet, who refuses to sell out and whose life then takes a downward turn. John Robinson (Elephant) and Victor Rasuk fill in as the naive Peralta and the sybaritic Alva, and Heath Ledger is almost unrecognizable as Skip, the sauced-out surf-shop owner who backs the boys. (107 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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