The Surfer – first-look review

Some­times all you need for a great film is a great premise. Lor­can Finnigan’s sopho­more fea­ture has that going for it at least: Nico­las Cage plays the tit­u­lar (oth­er­wised unnamed) surfer return­ing to the idyl­lic Aus­tralian coastal town he grew up in to pur­chase a beach­front house, only to dis­cov­er a group of hos­tile surfers have tak­en over. ​“Locals only!” they yell as they chase him and his mor­ti­fied teenage son (Finn Lit­tle) away from the shore. Nico­las Cage is going to have to do some­thing about that.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the zany set-up and strong start with an atmos­pher­ic surf-rock score and excel­lent title card are among The Surfer’s few redeem­ing fea­tures. It should be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Cage to deliv­er a clas­sic Cage Per­for­mance, but Thomas Martin’s ambling script doesn’t give him much to work with beyond a few choice line deliv­er­ies, so we spend the first hour of the film watch­ing Cage being bul­lied by beach bums who are slow­ly revealed to be a cult who wor­ship at the alter of Scal­ly (Julian McMa­hon), a cheery sort in a red sleeve­less hood­ie who makes a mint as a Jor­dan Petersen-esque sand-lov­ing Svengali.

There are a few ele­ments of intrigue, such as the local vagrant who sham­bles around the car park where The Surfer spends most of the film hang­ing out due to var­i­ous set­backs, oblique­ly refer­ring to a his­to­ry with the surf gang that his son used to be a part of. But The Surfer shoots for lite psy­che­del­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal thrills and falls short of the mark – it’s quite mis­er­able to watch a man being repeat­ed­ly tor­ment­ed with dog poo and stolen prop­er­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly since his reac­tion is one of anguish rather than anger. Rather than lead­ing to a sat­is­fy­ing cli­max where our pro­tag­o­nist can enact his revenge, The Surfer peters out inel­e­gant­ly, deny­ing us the sat­is­fac­tion of real­ly see­ing this bunch of dick­heads get what they’re due.

It’s a film that real­ly wants to be about hot-but­ton issues, like tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, but doesn’t have any­thing inter­est­ing to say about them. In fact, it’s pecu­liar that in a film where char­ac­ters harp on about their proud ties to the com­mu­ni­ty, not even a pass­ing ref­er­ence is made to the actu­al locals in Aus­tralia – the Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ples who have been per­se­cut­ed for gen­er­a­tions. Seems like a glar­ing omis­sion, but as a film made by and star­ring out­siders, per­haps that over­sight didn’t cross their minds.