'The Surfer' is a gnarly psychodrama in which Nicolas Cage can't catch a break

A sunny formation noir sounds similar a contradiction until you’re sweating successful the soil alert of the sting successful your eyes and the uncomfortable consciousness that there’s thing incorrect with you, your beingness and however you’re surviving it. Why aren’t you having much fun?

“The Surfer,” directed by Lorcan Finnegan (“Vivarium”) and written by Thomas Martin, captures that scenic unease and cranks up the vigor until adjacent its ain agleam yellowish retro rubric font looks sarcastic. It’s a movie successful which the mythic crashes into the ridiculous, the intersection wherever its prima Nicolas Cage has besides staked his career. Playing an unnamed surfer stuck precocious and adust atop a parched parking lot, Cage stares down astatine the waves beneath with the thirst of a battered cartoon coyote. You half-expect to spot his pupils popular retired of his binocular lenses.

The enactment each takes spot connected a tiny spot of coastland successful fictitious Luna Bay, Australia, wherever Cage’s quality claims helium grew up earlier moving to California astatine property 15. His accent doesn’t person a hint of it, but astatine slightest his tegument is tanned the aforesaid shadiness of orangish arsenic his hair. Now a linen-suit-clad businessman, he’s returned with his ain teenage lad (Finn Little) soon earlier Christmas with immoderate paternal water wisdom. “You either surf it oregon you get wiped out,” Cage tells his boy, philosophically.

The kid is unimpressed by him; the section surf bullies adjacent little so. Cage doesn’t get a toed successful the tide earlier he’s fixed the heave-ho by a pretentious radical of quasi-spiritual surfers called the Bay Boys. The formation is public, Cage insists. The Bay Boys’ guru Scalley (Julian McMahon, fantastic) is unmoved. “Yeah, but nah,” Scalley says and shrugs, his chill turning crystal cold. An intimidatingly acceptable and blessed beingness coach, Scalley promotes the powerfulness of antheral primal energy, though the movie is savvy capable to constituent retired that helium was besides calved affluent and curates an Instagram. Kudos to costumer Lien See Leong for outfitting McMahon successful a hooded terry cloth poncho that makes him look similar Jesus walked crossed the h2o to bent ten.

“The Surfer” has a crippled you could recount successful 30 seconds. First, Cage won’t permission and past helium can’t permission — and past helium can’t bash thing without the Bay Boys making him suffer. (“Suffer” and “surfer,” Martin’s publication points out, are lone 1 missive apart.) The movie is inspired by a real-life surf pack from the Palos Verdes Peninsula, but everything from the gait to the performances has been amplified into absurdity. A infinitesimal ne'er goes by without Cage’s circumstances getting worse. His insistence connected staying enactment makes him sacrifice 1 presumption entity aft different — his phone, his shoes, his car — and it isn’t agelong until he’s limping and ranting and crouching adjacent to condom wrappers portion men pursuit him with tiki torches. Luna Bay drives radical lunatic. It’s each gathering toward the aforesaid tsunami of rage.

Cage has been connected a streak of making catchy low-budget B-movies by rising filmmakers specified arsenic “Pig,” “Dream Scenario” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” It’s a superb approach: His fame gets interesting projects disconnected the crushed and, successful turn, helium gets to beryllium the biggest thing successful them. Not each movie works, but capable of them do, peculiarly the ones that committedness unit — which this delivers, but not successful the mode you mightiness think. Most of “The Surfer’s” harm is mental; we’re steeped successful Cage’s descent. It would marque a large double-feature with Burt Lancaster’s 1968 “The Swimmer,” different hallucinatory psychodrama astir a braggart skidding downhill.

The tribalistic Bay Boys merit oversea urchin spikes jammed into their toes. You travel to hatred their enviable ease, the pinkish zinc pick slashed crossed their noses, their wagging tongues and mediate fingers. (They adjacent sabotage the h2o fountain, conscionable similar Rome’s Gen. Aquillius is said to person poisoned his enemy’s wells.) Their giant, phony smiles reminded maine of dolphins circling their prey and their mean laughter is blended into the dependable of cackling birds. I deliberation the movie knows that the pack sanction Bay Boys — the aforesaid 1 arsenic the existent Californians — is simply a lame thought of cool. It’s hard for the characters to accidental it with menace. More unnerving is the mode everyone conscionable accepts these guys are successful charge. Shrugs 1 ritzy woman, “It stops them beating the Botox retired of their wives.”

At involvement is our outrage that the quality successful this satellite has been commandeered by radical who enactment similar they ain the planet. We wouldn’t beryllium arsenic invested if the stakes were privately owned — say, a play nine oregon a gated assemblage — though Cage’s quality with his luxury car and costly latte wont astir apt cares astir those, too. He’s nary honorable underdog, brushing disconnected a bum (Nicholas Cassim) who begs him for help. Cage doesn’t privation to adjacent the playing field. He either wants to beryllium oregon pain it each down.

For him, this formation is personal. As a boy, helium played connected this nonstop spot. As a antheral (and there’s much testosterone successful this movie than h2o successful the Pacific Ocean) he’s hopeless to bargain backmost his grandfather’s location connected the cliff. These blue-green waves are his birthright. In phantasmagoric flashbacks, we larn that his household spilled humor successful their foam. Now, that committedness is receding by the hr arsenic guys with happier families and healthier muscles instrumentality his place. The grief successful this movie is relatable to anyone who’s realized however hard it is to spell location again, whether that means a recently gentrified vicinity oregon simply the information of what a middle-class wage utilized to afford.

Sun and oversea are successful each frame. Golden airy dapples connected Cage’s face. Aerial shots of h2o are utilized arsenic country wipes and their crashing sound underscores his psychic distress. Radek Ladczuk’s psychedelic camerawork loves melodramatic zooms and lenses that marque bodies blend and distort, underscoring however easy idiosyncratic tin descent from comfy to wretched, and the grandly mystical soundtrack by François Tétaz is wonderful, adjacent if it uses capable upwind chimes to summon Poseidon.

“It’s each gathering to this breaking point,” Cage says of the waves. Audiences hoping for a gonzo bloodbath volition beryllium disappointed that Finnegan keeps his morality murky. But it’s the close choice. It bugs you conscionable similar “The Surfer” intends to, making the movie travel you location similar soil successful your shoes.