First Descent

First Descent (Directors: Kemp Curly, Kevin Harrison)














Curly and Harrison have teamed up before, but this is their first feature. It's a documentary. I can't tell you if that picture above actually comes from the movie (it probably doesn't), but you get the idea.

2005 wouldn't be complete without another alternative-sports movie. We've had ice skating (Ice Princess), surfing/skateboarding (Lords of Dogtown), motorcycle racing (Supercross), and sailboating (Madison), and roller skating (Roll Bounce). Now its snowboarding. This one is a documentary though, so this is more about beautifully photographed death-defying stunts than the others--where it's all about the dangers of corporations/selling out and asshole rivals as the sport gains popularity.

In Valdez, Alaska, 5 kickass snowboarders (later joined by a sixth and also kickass snowboarder) attempt to take on mountains that have not been conquered. These 5 are Shawn Farmer, Terje Haakonsen, Shaun White, Nick Perata, and Hannah Teter (and then Travis Rice). All of them are popular snowboarders within the community for different reasons--Farmer for his craziness, Haakonsen for his incredible veteran bravery, White for his emerging superstar status, Perata for his professionalism, and Teter for being a tough-as-nails chick. All of it adds up to them being damn good at the sport.

We get the usual stuff--pioneers, its early rogue status that threatened skiers, its X-Games popularity and the introduction of corporate sponsers, its controversial introduction as an official sport in the Olympics at Nagano in 1998, and, of course, tons of footage of people thrashing down mountains and cheating death with wicked moves and avoiding the occasional avalanche.

Really, this is the type of thing that might be better as an IMAX film. This thing is sneaking into theatres during what will be a slow week at the movies, and it doesn't have much chance to succeed on this level. There's barely a reason to recommend it--it's not that it's bad, it's actually interesting--but I can't imagine people wanting to spend two hours watching snowboarding, especially when there's not a real story involved with it. What this movie needs is a hook--a sort of culmination, a goal, but there's not one (Haakonsen takes on an impossible mountain at the end, but it's not like you feel like you're seeing something special even though the snowboarders tell you that it is). Anyway, just by reading the descriptions you can tell if this is something for you.