This is a hard film to review – I would be either reviewing the top pros opinion of snowboarding and what it means to them, or archive footage from some of the most awesome snowboard films ever made. And neither is useful in actually assessing if you want to buy For Me.
The opening shot and section is in Hemsedal, Norway… I would have been way more stoked if I hadn’t seen this in Shred Bots last week but ignoring that, they haven’t carved the location out as a part. Rather, the footage is peppered through the film which seems to have a narrative somehow woven through it – but to decipher it I would either need to watch it five times and take a guess, or have the director explain it to me. Neither of which is happening.
Most of the film centres around a interviews with the likes of JP Walker, Terje Hakonsen, Shaun White, Danny Kass, Torstein Horgmo, Stale Sandbech, Mikkel Bang, Mark McMorris, Nicolas Muller, Jake Blauvelt, Heikki Sorsa, Eero Ettala, Kazu Kokubo, Charles Reid and more. They talk about their time in snowboarding. Either what inspired them, who they look up to, or the spots and clips that got them into it. What results is a lot of team members talking about how good each other is… And you can just imagine how long that’s entertaining for. Did I mention the run time is 50 minutes?
The really good watching comes towards the end when Terje, Mark McMorris, Nicolas Müeller and Jake Blauvelt take to the backcountry – it’s a learning experience for McMorris while the other guys do their thing. Müeller is a good watch here.
Torstein Horgmo’s contribution is big and well deserved. I like pretty much everything I’ve seen from that dude recently and in isolation, his input is pretty damn interesting.
Finally, the ender track is Lost It To Trying by Son Lux. Yep, the same song used in the teaser. There is no doubt it’s an awesome song that works so well but once you’ve put it out in the teaser, you can’t then make it the ender. It was a bit of a let down.
Would I buy this one? Probably not. The $12 it cost me to get the Shred Bots seemed a better spend for some of the same footage, a lot of the same riders and a whole lot better entertainment.
