'The Surfer' movie review: Nicolas Cage shines in a thriller that soon loses steam

Cast: Nicolas Cage; Julian McMahon; Nic Cassim; Miranda Tapsell; Alexander Bertrand; Justin Rosniak

Director: Lorcan Finnegan

Language: English

Hollywood is really into thrillers and horrors off late. Ghosts no longer scare people. People do. In the recent The Long Walk, the biggest threat came from your own speed. Weapons dug deep into the psychological realms of the human mind. And Together gorgeously and gloriously showed how two people are intertwined by fate and destiny. There’s a new Nicolas Cage movie that came out last year called The Surfer which premiered on Lionsgate Play on 19th September. It’s a story about a father, his son, and what the title says. And going by the trailer, it’s not going to be as smooth as the father-son duo thinks because if it was, there would be no movie.

Right from the time you are seated for a new thriller, you are absorbed by the lusciousness of the landscape and how dreary it’s about to get. The party poopers are looming large. The surfers are going to have a tough time. A father has to rise against all odds to give himself and his son what they desire. The background music that combines the waves of the sea and the warnings of an impending doom adds the right dose of intensity to a gripping narrative. This is the sea where Cage’s character grew up in. But now it’s all of a sudden alien. Right there is a perfect recipe of nail-biting tension and pulsating drama. But the pace gets lethargic at times and the narrative begins to drag its feet.

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How many confrontations and warnings are too many confrontations and warnings? The quips and the game of one-upmanship have nothing left to say except for the one line about how Cage doesn’t belong here anymore. At its heart, The Surfer is a film where a father wishes to fulfil his son’s desire to surf. It all boils down to the same old trope about how a parent will go to any lengths for family. It’s a tried and tested formula that Hindi cinema has flirted with endless times. So why should an industry far more evolved and enhanced stay away?

Nicolas Cage, an unpredictable actor, looks visibly exhausted by the time the film reaches its finish line. After all, he is a father who is dying to give his son what he wants. He also desires to reclaim what he truly deserves. There’s a line that says- Before you can have everything, you have to experience nothing. The same could be said about the film. It wants to have everything, almost loses everything, threatens to become a film that has nothing, until it achieves something. Result? Something always better than nothing.

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

The Surfer is now streaming on Lionsgate Play