Critic Reviews

• Trevor Johnston, Time Out

  This impressive sports doc finds enough drama in the situation to involve a wider audience, since the archive footage of these chaps gliding through waves the size of a house is quite something.

• Reyhan Harmanci, San Francisco Chronicle

  The film tries to tell us that money hasn't spoiled the fun, but I was much more curious about the black shorts than the Quicksilver brand board shorts.

• Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

  [An] insightful account of the rise of a, pardon the pun, new wave of surfers that transformed the sport in the mid-1970s.

• Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

  Some of the talk gets a little bombastic, but it's hard to deny the thrill involved.

• Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

  Bustin' Down the Door entertainingly captures surfing's last great hoorah of no-holds-barred radicalism.

• Nathan Lee, New York Times

  Happily, the filmmaker, Jeremy Gosch, puts his wide-eyed narrative together with an easy touch. With its amazing wall-to-wall footage of oceanic derring-do Bustin' Down the Door plays like visual air-conditioning.

• Simon Foster, sbs.com.au

  Most importantly, Bustin' Down The Door elucidates upon the spirituality of surfing.

• Matt Soergel, Florida Times-Union

  Almost all of the surfing footage is beautiful stuff, though you'll likely want to see even more.

• Edward Porter, Times [UK]

  Watching top surfers in action is never a chore, but the film's archive footage would have been even more enjoyable to lay viewers if the commentary had better explained why the men's innovations were so daring and controversial.

• Philip French, Observer [UK]

  An instructive story.

• Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

  Clearly designed to give credit where it's due, this film spotlights the guys who broke new ground to create modern surfing. But while it's an important, interesting document, it's rather too detailed for non-surfers.

• Anna Smith, Empire Magazine

  A subject worth exploring but, whilst old footage illustrates the storyline, this doesn't manage to strecth up until the present day.

• Richard Luck, Film4

  If it can't compete with the best surf documentaries, Bustin' Down The Door is never less than diverting - the thrill of conquered waves eclipsed only by the picture's educational value.

• Wendy Ide, Times [UK]

  The characters aren't quite as charismatic as the Z-Boys and the editing isn't as abrasively cool, but it does give a glimpse of how an outsider lifestyle evolved into a multibillion-dollar business.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  The documentary celebrates the athleticism and creativity of the sport's unsung Nureyevs and Nijinskys.

• Charlotte O'Sullivan, This is London

  Despite the group's many successes, self-pitying tears are rarely far from their eyes. It's fascinating stuff and unfathomably bleak.

• Ed Andrews, Little White Lies

  Although you'd expect moist eyes from bitter, fading stars desperately trying to scrawl their names in the history books, the film avoids this indignity with engaging characters, an informative narrative and tons of awe-inspiring archive footage.

• Jonathan Crocker, Total Film

  The vintage surf footage packs some thumping wipeouts and there's fresh relish in the sidestory of local Hawaiian surfers handing out beatings to their gnarly foreign invaders.

• David West, Filmstar Magazine

  The movie lacks the jaw-dropping spectacle of 2004 surfing doc Riding Giants, and conveniently sidesteps the issue of what happened to the sport's spiritual side when it became an industry.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  Packed with awesome footage and revealing interviews, it's one to bust down the cinema doors to catch.

Read all 24 critic reviews