Writer: Thomas Martin
Director: Lorcan Finnegan
Nicholas Cage is doing quite well nowadays, carving a late career in independent horror films. Earlier this year, he popped up in the flawed but interesting Longlegs as the disturbing serial killer. In The Surfer, which he co-produced, he has the main role as a man facing up to a gang of surfers who have commandeered a public beach in Australia. The result is a mix of Deliverance and Luxe Listings Sydney.
“Don’t live here; Don’t surf here” is the mantra relayed to Cage’s character (never named) when he takes his son surfing on Lunar Bay. The thing is that Cage used to live there, up in a house on the cliffs overlooking the shore that is a surfing paradise. If anyone deserves a place on the beach, it’s him. Also, it’s illegal for the gang, which calls itself the Bay Boys, to stop the public from using the beach. Cage’s surfer despairs of the action, calling it localism.
Cage’s surfer is rich – so rich, he tells one woman, he drives a Lexus. All he needs is a few more thousand dollars, and then he can buy back the house he grew up in. It’s something that he promised his estranged wife; reclaiming the family home might save his marriage, the film implies. But rather than sort out the cash, Cage stays in the car park above the beach to engage in a vendetta with the Bay Boys. Things get worse when the gang steals his surfboard.
Like Fight Club, Lorcan Finnegan’s film, written by Thomas Martin, is an examination of a version of masculinity that is under threat. The leader of the gang suggests that men have become too soft in today’s world. His beach house at the bottom of the cliffs is the centre of a celebration of toxic masculinity that Cage watches with dismay through a pair of binoculars.
This old-fashioned machismo is filmed in an old-fashioned way. The film starts as a homage to Hawaii Five-O with cheesy titles and grand but vacuous images of rolling waves. Shots of Cage in the distance are juxtaposed with close-ups so intimate that you can see his untidily clipped eyebrows and every mole on his skin. Reminiscent of the 60s TV show The Prisoner, the series of long shots and close-ups give the film a certain nostalgic feel as if the story is set in the past.
But the boys who terrorise the surfer in the car park are modern, with their mobile phones, and one even with black nail varnish, confirming that the aggression of men is still an issue of today, perhaps even more so as the intolerance of toxic masculinity increases. At times – too many, really – the subtext of Finnegan’s film is too blatant. More interesting is the identity of Cage’s surfer. Is he actually the self-made man he claims to be? Flashbacks and flashforwards show a body in the tide. Is this the surfer’s ultimate fate, or is he, in fact, a homeless man sleeping in his broken-down car, looking for the killers of his son and his dog? Cleverly, the film plays with these questions.
There seems to be one important missed opportunity in the film. Despite the presence of Indigenous actor Miranda Tapsell, there is no interrogation of who the beach historically belongs to. Her photographer is the only character who displays any kindness to the surfer as he increasingly becomes unhinged by lack of water and food. While the discussion of masculinity is so apparent in the Bay Boys’ behaviour and in their tribal ceremonies on the beach to unleash the animal within men, the postcolonial aspect of the film is too muted. Without Tapsell, this beach could be anywhere; these men are universal.
What kind of man the surfer will turn out to be is always in doubt. The Surfer is a good vehicle for Cage, though it must be said he’s better at shouting than he is at crying. He keeps the audience guessing right up to the final seconds of the film.
The Surfer is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
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Cage renaissance continues
