In giving "The Third Wave" my highest rating, I have no problem in disclosing that I am friends with its remarkable director Alison Thompson. Did our friendship influence my great admiration for her documentary? Not at all. In fact, we became friends after I was awed by the movie at the Tribeca Film Festival and wanted very much to interview Thompson to post on a web site so that other people would know about "The Third Wave." All filmmakers and every fan of documentaries will be excited by the guerrilla, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants camera-work--where the camera seems to be exploring and documenting on its own, and anything or anybody can venture in front of the lens. But much more significant is that every movie fan, every human being, will experience an immense emotional impact watching Thompson and her volunteer cohorts, in an exotic far-away land, try to lessen heartbroken tragedy with kindness, selflessness, and good will--and to see the broken people they're trying to help love them back or--in scenes with a "Lord of the Flies" feel-turn against them. While the money we sent to Indonesia after the tsunami got "lost" in transit, the volunteers sent themselves to nurse (Alison set up a hospital and in her spare time collected the bones of tsunami victims) and rebuild and teach. These humanitarians are fascinating, as are the people they encounter in Piralya, the village they bring back to life in Sri Lanka. Talk about role models and saints, forget the heroes played by actors in fictional epics in theaters and watch this little movie for the real deal, a four-person emergency peace corps who went to the disaster area for two weeks and stayed for two extraordinary years--the least we viewers can do is watch Alison Thompson and company work miracles for not even two hours. Danny Peary