In a Honolulu movie theater, Laird Hamilton, the best surfer to ever live, was struggling to find the right words. Dwarfed by the giant blank screen behind him, he floundered about for a way to thank the congregation of elite Hawaiian big-wave surfers who had gathered that evening to watch the new documentary, Riding Giants.

In the water, Hamilton has nothing to prove to anybody. But as co-producer and star of Stacy Peralta’s new surfing film, which opens in theaters across the nation this weekend, it was clear he felt a responsibility to acknowledge the crew of Hawaiian heavies sitting quietly beside their families and girlfriends in the dim theater.

Take Neptune out of the ocean and what do you have? One very complex human. And that’s infinitely more interesting than a surf god.

In sharp contrast to the “cinematic” Laird Hamilton, who in Riding Giants can be seen crouching like a cat on his board, calmly emerging from 30-foot, spewing, heaving death tubes, the man before us looked unmistakably vulnerable with a microphone in his hand.

Laird was still exhibiting glimpses of the kid he was 30 years ago, who had to fight for his spot on the beach and in the line-up, the only blond haole in an all-Hawaiian school, the fatherless child who latched on to North Shore legend Billy Hamilton.

Stacy Peralta and co-writer Sam George understand that good storytelling is all about good characters. So when they set out to tell the story of big-wave surfing, they plotted their film’s chronological trajectory using three personalities as guides: Greg “Da Bull” Noll, who pioneered North Shore surfing in the ‘50s and ‘60s; Jeff Clark, the Half Moon Bay surfer who rode Maverick’s alone from 1975 to 1990 before he could convince anyone else to join him; and Laird Hamilton, who changed the face of surfing in the ‘90s with the invention of tow-in surfing.

As a rule, surfers in hardcore surf flicks demonstrate about as much personality as porn stars; a survey of the canon reveals wave after wave of mindless eye candy. As a result, no surf documentary has transcended the genre since The Endless Summer in 1966, which managed the feat solely on the originality of Bruce Brown’s fresh, sublime imagery. Efforts such as Endless Summer II, Billabong Odyssey and Step Into Liquid have raised the bar in recent years, but these films lack a cohesive structure. By focusing on the historical progression of big-wave surfing, from its Polynesian roots to Laird Hamilton’s ontology-shattering ride at Teahupo’o in August 2000, Riding Giants manages to avoid that trap.

Although Riding Giants enjoyed a $2.5 million budget (enormous by surf movie standards) thanks to the success of Peralta’s previous film, the Oscar-nominated skateboarding documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, it’s the writing that truly distinguishes the film.

Before I go any further, I should point out that I have something to gain from the movie’s success. A few months ago, Jeff Clark asked me to write his biography. As I began conducting interviews and poring through archival materials, my questions became: What motivated this 17-year-old kid to paddle out through cold, sharky water to this monstrous, untested wave a half-mile offshore? More importantly, what kept him out there for 15 years by himself?

Going into the film, I was afraid that both Jeff and Maverick’s were going to be overshadowed by the film’s Hawaii-centric acts. I was relieved to find that Maverick’s is presented in all of its towering gnash-and-grind glory, thanks in large part to the segment’s associate director, Maverick’s legend Grant Washburn.

In fact, the sight of the break’s legendary size and unforgiving drop demolishing surfers to the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden is definitely one of the film’s highlights. What is missing from the segment, however, is an answer to my questions about Jeff’s compulsions.

The film adequately deals with the motivations of Noll and Hamilton, both of whom found surf celebrity early in their careers. But as Noll points out, Jeff was riding solo, surfing “with the bleachers empty.” He was driven by private impulses, and Riding Giants does nothing to reveal them.

Today, at 47, Jeff still surfs Maverick’s as fearlessly as he has for 30 years. That fact alone signifies there are no cut-and-dry answers to my primary questions about the man.

This, of course, is precisely why Riding Giants chooses to gloss over his motivations and, instead, focus on the 1994 death of Mark Foo at Maverick’s. Jeff’s story simply isn’t as easy to encapsulate as that of Noll’s or Hamilton’s.

I hate to say it, but for the full story behind Jeff Clark, I guess you’ll simply have to wait for the book. In the meantime, check out Riding Giants— in my humble and totally subjective opinion, the best surf movie ever made.