Oh, there’s a new movie out, great. Wait, it’s got Nicholas Cage in it, I’m in! The Surfer is Nick Cage’s new movie about a man standing up to local surfers. We had the trailer recently.
The Surfer goes back to the basics, one man taking on a gang of bullies. For reference, see every Jason Statham movie ever made. The only thing is here there’s not so much choreographed fighting.
The movie stars Cage, Finn Little, Rahel Romahn, Alexander Bertrand, Rory O’Keeffe, and Julian McHahon. Lorcan Finnegan is the director, with Thomas Martin penning the script.
The Story
The story of The Surfer is:
A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. When he is humiliated by a group of locals, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising and pushes him to his breaking point.
The Surfer (Cage, and that’s the character’s name) turns up at out of an way beach to surf with his son. He grew up there and is planning to buy a house in the area again. Before they get to the waves, the locals aren’t all that friendly.
In fact, I would say the locals are ‘rotters’ (sorry to use such language, but it’s needed here). The motto that the locals use, apart from some very colourful metaphors, is:
Don’t live here! Don’t surf here!
A bum, who seems to live in his car, tells them to avoid the beach as well. They try to get the water, and it kicks off. Thankfully, no one is hurt, but the Surfer isn’t having any of it and will fight in his corner to surf at the beach.
Basically, it all spins out of control, he’s abused, his board gets stolen, and it seems the cops are ‘local’ as well, so no help there.
Surfer’s Bum
As time goes on, Cage slips down and down, and reaches full ‘Cage’ in the second act. You have to love Cage, he will always give 110% and chew the scenery if it looks tasty. He ends up like the other homeless man who lives in the car park, a local bum.
Watching him slip into madness is good. I was going to say fun, but it’s not fun, as you are really with him on the journey. Bullies are horrible, and when it’s about 20 vs 1, it’s even worse. I was hoping Cage was going to go ‘Mandy Cage’, with them all, but he doesn’t.
He just slips further and further into madness until he’s broken, but here lies the problem.
The Third Act
I’m not going to spoil the end of The Surfer, but for me, it wasn’t all that satisfying. What I wanted was a gun blazing shot out with all of the bullies getting one in the chest, then two in the head.
The Surfer takes a different route, and it’s one that annoyed me. I’m no writer, we all know that, but I couldn’t see how they planned to finish the movie without guns. In my eyes, the end cops out a bit. There is a moral message, but love, life and the pursuit of happiness, but at the same time, there are no consequences to actions.
The entire point of a bully in a movie is to see him getting his comeuppance. For an example; when Biff gets punched by George in Back to the Future. It was a glorious moment that still holds up today.
In The Surfer, the bullies aren’t punished for their actions. As I said, there is a moral, but it personally didn’t work for me. You may get different mileage, and it’s a movie that will promote discussion. However, I thought it was far too serious for its own good.
Overall
The Surfer is worth a watch, Cage going full Cage is always good to see, and this happens here. It’s just the writing in the third act that let it down, for me anyway.
As I said, you might get more out of it; there is a ‘father and son’ moral through the whole thing, and I don’t have kids, so maybe this is why I missed it.
The ending is an ending, I just found it wasn’t all that good. That’s just me, though. I would give it another go at some point; I may feel different on a second watch.
I give The Surfer a solid 3, though, just for Cage, you can find it on VoD.
