'Bra Boys'

Rating:

GENE SEYMOUR

April 11, 2008

BRA BOYS (R). The dashing young lords of California's Dogtown have nothing on the hard-core surf gangs of Australia, whose assaults on the world's scariest waves are matched, if not exceeded, by their full-contact battles with rivals, traitors and cops.

"Bra Boys" isn't a documentary so much as an all-encompassing home movie about one segment of this tattooed subculture, based in a Sydney suburban beach community. The movie's eponymous gang is led by the Abberton brothers, one of whom, Sunny, co-directed, co-wrote and produced this film. Thus, you know going in that this is going to be a fairly one-sided portrait. But it's also fairly thorough with its archival footage, historical and sociological perspective and depiction of events that led to the jailing of two other Abberton brothers in connection with a murder of an extortionist. One hears that narrator Russell Crowe is trying to develop a dramatic feature version of "Bra Boys."

That movie will have to go some distance to match this one's sometimes startling surfing footage. Written, produced and directed by Sunny Abberton. 1:24 (vulgarities, violence, wanton recklessness). At the AMC Loews Shore 8, Huntington, and the Quad Cinemas, Manhattan.