There are few more satisfying occasions in modern cinema than watching Nicolas Cage have a bad time and deal with it badly. Few performers operate with his total commitment to the very natural despair of a life upended. Stoicism may be a healthier route in real life, but the catharsis of a meltdown – especially one as delivered by Cage – is an unparalleled release valve.
THE SURFER – a low-budget, deliriously old-school tale of freefall directed by Lorcan Finnegan debut – understands its star’s greatest strength. Here, Cage plays an unnamed man in a move that somehow cements ties to the ‘Cage’-ness of his persona. Rather than creating a character, he becomes separate from his on-screen self. This man has moved back to Australia after spending his childhood and most of his life in California. His business dealings (never fully defined) are unsuccessful, as is his marriage; to let off some steam, he decides to get a surfboard and get back into the water. But his first attempts are stymied by hostile locals – to them, he’s an interloper who has not done his time at best and is a tourist at worst. Insult soon progresses to injury, and the man – reduced to nothing by the world – builds himself back up by all means at his disposal.
“THE SURFER’s scrappy aesthetic further heightens its effect. It pulls from 1970s exploitation films where the madness and violence are the point.”
Cage delivers a terrific turn as a man with nothing to lose: uncool and aware of it, desperate to be seen as a man with something to offer the world rather than a tourist and has-been. Despite logically unreasonable demands, his character is willing to put the hours in, as the hostile local surfers urge him to. Some scenes – such as one where his phone loses power, and, therefore, his ability to pay for food or contact his nearest and dearest – are genuinely gut-wrenching in their mundanity; others, when nature itself takes no mercy on him, veer into Greek tragedy, where the pathos is no less, but the absurd extremity causes some emotional distance in the audience. The tonal whiplash will not work for everyone, but compared to 2023’s middling DREAM SCENARIO, Cage is better suited to the big and bombastic rather than the quirky. Therefore, this feels like a return to form rather than a case of squandered potential.
THE SURFER’s scrappy aesthetic further heightens its effect. It pulls from 1970s exploitation films where the madness and violence are the point. Any observations that can be made about human nature are second to the fun – perhaps its greatest success is knowing that humans have always loved a good tale of revenge and redemption.
While THE SURFER does not deliver many surprises beyond the details of Cage’s character’s trials, humiliations, and triumphs (at what cost?), fans of Cage, Australian dramas, and a B-movie’s relish for the extreme will find it lives up to the promise of its premise with aplomb.