Big Wednesday
“...I've been fascinated by Milius - one of the most interesting, original, brilliant (and crazed) of the young Hollywood filmmakers. He's one of the few with a feeling for adventure and a cinematic style of storytelling. As writer and/or director he's had a hand in Dirty Harry, Dillinger, Magnum Force, The Wind and the Lion, even Apocalypse Now.... Sometimes his energy is raw and uncontrolled, but often it's honed to an edge of cutting ideology, as in The Wind and the Lion....

“So I was dumbfounded at the savage antagonism which met Big Wednesday on its initial release.... Milius was deeply distressed; word has it he does not intend to direct again. And yet Big Wednesday is thoroughly exciting and entertaining; it works as an action film, it's packed with thrilling surf-level photography, and it's shot through with psychological insight....

“Big Wednesday is a surfing movie the way ‘Moby Dick' is a whale book. On the surface it's a chronicle of 20 years in the lives of three great, early California surfers, but its real concerns are loss, legend and the inevitable triumph of time. Although his three aging surfers (Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt and Gary Busey) are the main characters, the thematic center of the film is reserved for Bear, crafter of surfboards and keeper of legends... the most interesting character... because he loses the most - even if Milius allows his metamorphosis from demigod to drunk to take place largely off-screen.

“...The film's passion transcends its problems. Milius is working a classic vein in classic style... reaching for a dangerous, slippery metaphor... and he gets it....”