Cage’s commitment to edgy acting shores up a quirky, confounding tale touting toxic masculinity
“The Surfer” — 3 stars
Like fingerprints, snowflakes and cashews, no two Nicolas Cage characters are exactly the same.
As Forrest Gump might observe, you never know what you’re gonna get with Nicolas Cage, except hyperbolic, unpredictable performances that never bore us, especially when he reverts to his signature volcanically violent freak-outs now known collectively as “Cage Rage.”
His radically realized characters frequently constitute the best reasons to sit through even his least-appreciated direct-to-video features. Cage hasn’t just evolved into a cult performer, his insanely diverse movies should be recognized as a unique film genre on their own merits.
Sure, Cage has appeared in an ultra-impressive variety of genres already: dramas, comedies, horror, historical epics, gangster tales, fantasies, Westerns, sci-fi, military stories, animated opuses and superhero adventures.
His irresistibly intense performance style has transcended the natural order of the cinematic universe.
Which brings us to the actor’s latest showcase, “The Surfer,” a psychological thriller directed by Lorcan Finnegan.
Cage plays the Surfer, a man whose name we never learn.
He has returned to his native Australia to take his teen son (Finn Little) surfing on his nostalgic childhood beach, only to be stopped and threatened by some rough-and-tumble territorial locals with signs proclaiming, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.”
As the Lionsgate press release describes it, the man “is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising in concert with the punishing heat of the summer and pushes him to his breaking point.”
We suspect more Cage Rage might be on the way.
But no, “The Surfer” cannily sidesteps into a blackest of comedies centered around toxic maleness, herd-mentality branding rituals, a man’s midlife crisis, and how easy an individual can be broken down and reassembled to fit in with a local male-centric cult, this one led by a swarthy, middle-aged toughie named Scally (Julian McMahon).
Scally remembers when Cage’s surfer used to live in the upscale house on a nearby mountain, but cuts him no slack, even though the aging man is desperately trying to buy back his childhood homestead for $1.6 million.
His life and marriage have fallen apart, you see, and he wants to recapture those nostalgic childhood moments by returning to his beachside roots. Or something like that.
I profess that I can’t really tell where “The Surfer” stands on male toxicity and tribalism, except that it’s brutal, effective and attractive to many xenophobic Australian guys.
As the Surfer ineffectively stands up against the local bullies, he becomes stranded in the beachside parking lot, his Lexus stolen, his cellphone battery dead, his food and water supplies cut off.
Stripped of his possessions, his identity and his grip on reality, he reverts to survivalist tactics by drinking smelly brown water from a rusty faucet, nearly devouring a dead rat, and losing all sense of civility as the scorching Aussie sun bakes him alive in translucent waves and waves of blistering heat captured in Radek Ladczuk’s super-saturated-color images recalling vibrant film stocks from the early 1970s.
Accompanied by Francois Tetaz’s quirky, noise-infused score (sounding similar to Australian composer Ron Grainer’s works), “The Surfer” seems tailor-made for yet another over-the-top, go-for-broke performance by Cage, once again defiantly refusing to pander to our sympathies.
He overacts, overpowers and overturns expectations.
Then, it’s over.
• • •
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little
Directed by: Lorcan Finnegan
Other: A Lionsgate theatrical release. Rated R for drug use, language, violence. 103 minutes.