A throwback to the halcyon days of skateboard hysteria in New Zealand, there’s admittedly little here to grasp onto for those of us born too late in the eighties. But for those old enough to remember Leif Garrett and Robert Muldoon, No More Heroes may very well induce a flood of Super 8 memories, from rubber jandals, to knee-high tube socks, to strains of Kiwiana punk rock. Narrated by long-haired skate icons now balding and in their forties, the film’s nostalgia may also make you feel your age.

Andrew Moore was there when it first exploded, dissecting the rise and fall of the skateboarding scene via a vivid chronology: car parks and suburban streets became makeshift skateparks, backyards turned into homemade ramps, concrete bowls were erected, the holy grail of Skatetopia emerged. And then like so many cultural phenomena birthed in the seventies, it all came crashing down. Why filmmakers are so constantly drawn back to this train wreck decade says as much about a burning desire to recapture heady times, as it does a resignation that it’ll never be the same again. The film’s choice of title rather bluntly affirms just that. Indeed, as grainy footage of hand-standing, barefooted, laid back skate fanatics attests, the surf-influenced fluidity and grace of “old school” skateboarding is destined to remain firmly in the past.—Tim Wong