Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Lorcan Finnegan
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin
Rosniak
Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan is known for tightly
constructed genre thrillers in which middle class protagonists mentally
unravel when faced with bizarrely testing circumstances (Vivarium; Nocebo). Finnegan's latest, The Surfer, continues this theme, but the controlled filmmaking we're
accustomed to from Finnegan has been replaced by something much looser and
thematically messier. That's probably in no small part down to the casting
of Nicolas Cage in the lead role. Once you cast Nicolas
Cage in a movie you have to accept that it's no longer your movie, it's
now a Nicolas Cage movie. There's a sense throughout The Surfer that Finnegan has made compromises to accommodate Cage's unique
brand of oddness, but without knowing Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin's original intentions, I can't say whether this was a wise move or not.
What I can say is that Cage is the best thing about the movie, and I can't
imagine any other actor in this role.
The role in question is that of an an unnamed man (credited merely as
"Surfer") who grew up in Australia before moving to the US as a teen
following a family tragedy. Years later the now middle-aged Surfer has
returned to the beach community of his childhood, where he hopes to
purchase the home in which he was raised. Taking his estranged teenage son
(Finn Little, credited as "The Kid") out of school for the day,
Surfer takes him to the beach to ride its famous waves before revealing
his plan to buy the home, which he delusionally believes he will share
with his son and his ex-wife.
The attempt at surfing is quickly scuppered when Surfer is confronted by
aggressive locals who insist the beach isn't for outsiders. Surfer tries
to make the case that he grew up in the area, but it's not flying, and
he's hit with the repeated mantra of "Don't live here, don't surf here."
When his son dejectedly returns home, Surfer sticks around, sleeping in
his car and drawing increasingly violent and unwanted attention from the
locals. He's ostensibly hanging around to ensure he gets his bid for the
house accepted, having been informed of a rival bid, but he also seems
intent on defying the locals and hitting the waves, despite the
risks.
What Finnegan has made here is a sweat-soaked love letter to Ozploitation, that
distinctive brand of Aussie genre cinema that thrived in the '70s and
'80s. Cage's disintegration to a near feral state, growing increasingly
mad in the baking sun as he refuses to leave the beach, mirrors that of
the prim English protagonist of Ted Kotcheff's Wake in Fright. Finnegan nods to Long Weekend with cutaway shots of the area's wildlife, the birds almost seeming
to mock Cage with their song. The local surfers, known as the "Bay Boys,"
are shepherded by a cult leader named Scally (Julian McMahon), and
you could imagine Max Rockatansky running across this lot in the
post-apocalyptic Australia of the Mad Max series. Cage's inability to stand up against his tormentors, who
take full advantage of his weakness, echoes the exploited bourgeois
homeowner of Peter Weir's The Plumber, while there's something of Picnic at Hanging Rock in the film's more psychedelic moments.
The Surfer attempts to comment on various hot-button political issues. The
"local beach for local surfers" mantra mirrors the racist refrains of the
growing far right, and in an ironic touch it's only an aboriginal woman
(Miranda Tapsell) who shows Cage any charity. Scally is posited as
an Andrew Tate-esque figurehead for his own "manosphere" microcosm,
preying on the masculine insecurities of the area's young men. But these
ideas are merely superficial window dressing, never really explored in
much depth.
Finnegan seems more concerned with crafting a future midnight movie. His
film is an acid meat pie western, with Scally in the classic role of the
land-owning villain who has used his influence to take over a town,
including its police force. It all seems headed for revenge thriller
territory, but the film has more heady notions; I'm just not sure what
those notions actually are. Sometimes it's best to lean into the obvious,
and I suspect nobody would have been disappointed if the final act saw
Cage's Surfer fighting back against the bleach blonde bullies who have
spent the movie kicking metaphorical sand in his face. A true midnight
movie would have given the audience what they want, a cathartic bloodbath,
but rather than riding this opportunistic wave, The Surfer lets the tide slowly go out in an unsatisfying denouement.
The Surfer is in UK/ROI cinemas
from May 9th.
