Starring Emile Hirsch, Heath Ledger, and Rebecca De Mornay. Rated PG.

It's rare that a dramatic interpretation is as compelling and authentic as the nonfiction documentary that inspired it. And it's equally rare when an independent filmmaker successfully makes the transition into the mainstream with integrity and vision intact. Yet this is exactly the case with Lords of Dogtown, Catherine Hardwicke's hard-hitting film depicting the 1970s birth of contemporary skateboard culture. It is based on the true story of a crew of reckless teenage surfers-inclu?ding Stacy Peralta (who wrote the script), Tony Alva, and Jay Adams-and their evolution out of the roiling waters off Venice, California, and onto the rolling concrete of the slum neighbourhood they called "Dogtown".

If that story sounds familiar, it's because Peralta has told it before in his own fascinating 2001 documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys. Peralta and his fellow Z-boys had the right stuff to become de facto test pilots for Skip Engblom's Zephyr Skate Shop, road-testing the emerging skateboard technologies-like concrete-gripping urethane wheels-and competing as a team at skateboard events. Then came the luck of the drought, as a crippling heat wave hit Los Angeles and thousands of kidney-shaped backyard swimming pools lay empty. Skip's outlaw crew used these improvised skate bowls to hone and refine their acrobatic skate routines and became the fledgling sport's first rock stars. But, as with most rock stars, greed and temptation-money, sex, and drugs-soon took their toll, and the team became splintered.

John Robinson as Peralta, Victor Rasuk as poodle-haired Alva, and Emile Hirsch as Adams convincingly depict the emotional climate of the time in a way that even the documentary couldn't. Hirsch, in particular, is a standout as Adams, easily the most damaged citizen of a place he called "ghetto-by-the-sea". Heath Ledger steals whatever scenes he is in as Engblom, whom he plays as a kind of visionary drunken beach bum. Rebecca De Mornay, as Adams's dishevelled mother, and Johnny Knoxville, as Topper Burks, the personification of exploitation, fill out the cast. Most of the real Z-boys appear in cameos along with second-generation boarder Tony Hawk. The film's soundtrack-like a continuously running hits of the '70s eight-track tape-defines the decade the way American Graffiti's music defined the '50s. Although the Super-8 footage incorporated into Peralta's documentary clearly inspired the grainy look of Hardwicke's film (her previous feature, Thirteen, however, did have the same hand-held feel), Lords of Dogtown is a true collaboration that supplements rather than replaces its nonfiction predecessor.