According to director Sunny Abberton, Bra Boys is one of the world’s ‘most infamous surf tribes’. A family brotherhood that grew into a beach gang ruling one of Sydney’s poorer suburbs can claim notoriety. Drugs, brawls and murder have dogged the Bra Boys wherever they go. This documentary seeks to address ill-perception and show another side to a mob founded by the tearaway Abberton brothers.

This technically inept account opens like a museum video, underscored by Crowe’s inappropriate narration. It pays lip service to Australia’s surf history before charting the Abberton’s early years and the formation of the clan. Bra Boys purports to reveal battlers done good - family and friends who found the beach was a way out of the ghetto. In effect, it shows a group of housing commission thugs who hide behind their surf-boards. Acknowledging (though not explaining) his brother Korby’s massive contribution to surfing and the positive role Bra Boys played during the Cronulla Riots, Abberton glosses over many darker matters, notably his brothers’ involvement in the murder of stand-over man, Anthony Hines.

It is true that many surfers are victimised by authority – hell, surfers were once made to wear dresses. Yet any ‘oppression’ visited upon the Bra Boys has as much to do with their disregard for law than their position as blokey vigilantes. There are brief passages of clarity when Bra Boys becomes the film Abberton wanted to make, and it is here we learn something of his subject. But the enduring lack of balance is one of many criminal acts committed while creating a documentary that is little more than a vanity piece.

// COLIN FRASER