THE SURFER. Nicolas Cage riding the wave

The sun at its zenith, heat pouring from the sky, the sea churning with dozens of waves. In such natural circumstances begins “The Surfer” by Lorcan Finnegan, the latest film starring Nicolas Cage. However, this is not another variation on Kathryn Bigelow’s cult classic “Point Break,” though here too we find surfers who don’t always play fair. “The Surfer” is almost a Job-like tale of a man chasing a dream, mainly hindered by… himself.

An unnamed father takes his son to a special place—an Australian beach where he once nurtured his passion for surfing. The problem is, this surfing spot is reserved only for locals, and he—though born in Australia—is considered an outsider because he spent most of his life in California and speaks with a thoroughly American accent. After a rather unpleasant confrontation with a group of staunch local surfers, the father and son are forced to give up taming the waves at this particular spot. However, the character played by Nicolas Cage soon returns to his beloved beach, also because he is about to buy back his family home located nearby. The protagonist’s determination quickly meets with a hostile reaction from the locals, who take it upon themselves to discourage the foreign intruder by any means necessary. Including those explicitly mentioned in the criminal code.

“The Surfer” was featured in the Midnight Madness section of this year’s New Horizons festival, but it must be admitted that Lorcan Finnegan’s film is far from the most outlandish offerings in this section, even in recent years. For quite a while, it seems that the main character is destined to be a classic film avenger, who, after successive confrontations with local thugs, will arm himself to the teeth and single-handedly dispense justice. However, Finnegan does not take the easy way out and complicates this story a bit, giving Cage plenty of room to showcase his acting creativity. There is even a touch of classic Cage madness, though fans of the actor’s extreme on-screen antics might feel somewhat disappointed. Still, it’s good to see Nicolas in top form—though he overacts, he doesn’t verge on ridiculousness, as has unfortunately been the case in recent years. This is undoubtedly largely thanks to Finnegan himself, but the alternately spacious and tight cinematography by Polish cinematographer Radek Ładczuk allowed this performance to resonate effectively.

Thematically, “The Surfer” is, on one hand, a story about an individual’s resistance to intimidation and persecution, and on the other, a rather broadly drawn tale about contemporary masculinity—its crisis and various models functioning in society. The unnamed protagonist represents the upper middle class, a rather wealthy man who realizes himself through the acquisition of more goods. In contrast to him are the surfer-gangsters who adhere to the cult of muscle strength, a “primitive” masculinity that—so it seems—regularly needs to be reaffirmed by acts of violence. The filmmakers do not take sides—over time, each stance is highlighted enough for the viewer to decide which is better. Or maybe neither of the models of masculinity presented in the film turns out to be the right one?

“The Surfer” is a successful film, though not necessarily original—it treads familiar paths and arrives at familiar conclusions, but it does so quite effectively and, importantly, sometimes humorously, which we have almost come to expect from films featuring Nicolas Cage. There are no revolutionary elements in Lorcan Finnegan’s work, nor will it make it to my festival “top picks,” but it is good to see the cult actor in good form again and in a high-quality production—we all know that in the last several (dozen?) years, such films have been extremely rare in Cage’s oeuvre.