Directed by: Lorcan Finnegan.
Written by: Thomas Martin.
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Finn Little, Rahel Romahn.
Runtime: 100 minutes.
Nicolas Cage catches a wild wave in darkly comic ‘The Surfer’
Imagine Nicolas Cage going full lunatic, beating rats to death his bare hands in a sunburnt daze as he undergoes the trials of Job in the parking lot of an Australian beach, facing off against an organized surfing gang. You’ve just imagined “The Surfer,” an impossible-to-categorize gnarly new Cage joint that’s either as fun or as bad as you think that summary sounds.
It’s not exactly a fun time at the movies (there are too many lingering shots of animal excrement for that to be the case), though it is a darkly funny one if you’re inclined to meet Cage on his deranged wavelength. His unnamed, American-accented protagonist, the titular Surfer, arrives at lovely Luna Bay, a sparkling stretch of Australian beach, with his teenage son (Finn Little) in tow, board in hand. He’s eager to catch some waves in his old haunt as he waits for a call from his realtor to close the deal on a cliffside house overlooking the scenic beach.
But a “locals only” sign proves to have teeth, and the Surfer and his son are soon accosted by the Luna Bay Boys. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” the golden surf gods threateningly intone. When he dismisses their warning, the Luna Bay Boys knock him down and take his beloved surfboard, displaying it as a trophy above their off-limits beach shack.
You don’t cast Cage in a movie for his character to quietly accept defeat; you cast Cage to berserk mode. It’s a credit to Cage’s charisma that he’s able to hold your interest through what’s largely a single-location film as a series of mishaps and escalations between the Surfer and the Luna Bay Boys in a beach parking lot strips the beleaguered man of everything he has – his possessions, his dignity, his sanity – in his single-minded pursuit to reclaim what was taken from him.
There’s a metaphor here, beyond the Job-like nature of the Surfer’s tribulations – a brief phone call with his wife (that is, soon-to-be ex-wife) hints at deeper pain, as does his obsession with this cliffside house and no family to put in it. Is it really the surfboard he’s trying to reclaim?
It’s also a testament to Cage’s command of the screen that the point at which the movie loses its mystique is when the peripheral characters come into focus. The Surfer’s suffering is more interesting unexplained; as a masculinity-crisis hazing ritual that’s a little bit “Fight Club” meets “Falling Down” with Aussie flair, it becomes silly.
“Before you can surf, you must suffer” is a line that can only be taken so seriously, and so in the end “The Surfer” is a movie that can only be taken so seriously. But if you can catch Cage’s wave, it’s still a wild ride.
Barbara’s ranking
2/4 stars
