The Surfer
An Australian born man, who has lived in the USA for years, has moved back to buy his old family home on the coast by the beach.
At Summer Christmas in Australia, he takes his son to the beach to go surfing, he runs afoul of the locals who refuse to let him surf.
He then finds himself stranded when his cars battery goes flat, then gets his items stolen – and begins to lose sense of reality as the days go by.
Direction
Credit where it is due, this is the only real up of the film. Lorcan Finnegan (director of Vivarium) feels like he is homaging 1970s exploitation/grindhouse films with the fun camera work (zooms from long distances, or ultra close up of eyes/etc).
The lens work is disorienting and the night time colours are unique and give eerie vibes with the strong use of greens.
Cast/Characters
Nicholas Cage plays the unnamed man, who finds himself a ‘stranger in a strange land’. As much as he does his usual Cagey thing, he feels like he held back ever so slightly, and didn’t give us his full Cage.
The recently departed Julian McMahon, as Scally, was a strange casting as he had not played an Australian character for decades. Even his ‘accent’ sounded strange (almost native Australian Aboriginal at times), and what was with those teeth? Unfortunately as this is one of his final roles, it is not one of his better ones. RIP good sir, you will be missed.
Screenplay/Setting/Themes
While clearly taking reference from the exploitation/grindhouse films, and even Tarantino – this was not a well made narrative.
The man, doesn’t actually become ‘stranded’ until day 2 – and for some reason he becomes obsessed with the beach before he even meets ‘the antagonists’. As the days go by, those who frequent the car-park where he is stranded taunt him, refuse him service, and defecate the only water fountain, leaving him without water, dehydrating him.
His desire to buy back his old home (for a bargain price of $1.6 million) on the beach becomes his primary objective, and then obsession.
He is cliched divorced, with his (off-screen) ex wanting to get remarried and is pregnant.
He meets a local ‘bum/homeless’ man who has hatred for Scally, and is taunted by the locals as well.
The pacing is poorly done as well, with ‘the man’ dehydrated, and trapped for days begins his decent into madness at the 50m mark. Considering there was still an hour to go at this point, this is where the film SHOULD have done what I thought it was going to do. As ‘the man’ goes into madness, it should have been revealed that he is the bum – however the third act reveal does something even worse.
The last half an hour are just even worse, with the writers taking the easy way out (it was all a farce, Scally and his friends were just testing ‘the man’ to make sure he was… loyal? Then the bum and Scally have “their finale”
Ugh!
Some of the dialogue, it is clear that it was written by someone who isn’t aware of Australian colloquialism. One such bit of dialogue is when Scally says “we put that up seven summers back”. Who TF talks like that????
Overall
This is probably my first review where I only really appreciated the direction, and there wasn’t really much else it had going for it.
Bad Screenplay, Bad acting (even Cage), Bad logic in narrative, Bad pacing.
So many unanswered questions.
Why was the beach sacred to the locals?
Why didn’t the man just… leave? He had so many times, he could have… walked?
So stupid!
I’m being very generous here.
2/5