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Review: Nicolas Cage Goes Full 'Groundhog Day' Thriller in 'The Surfer'
A surprisingly low-key Nicolas Cage performance anchors The Surfer, a throwback revenge thriller with a jet-black comedic edge from Vivarium director Lorcan Finnegan. For about 40 minutes, this film is an intriguing and even propulsive B-movie programmer. The first act is an efficient revenge setup, infused with some lush photography (the picture was shot on location in Melbourne) and an authentic grittiness which recalls '70s Antipodean grindhouse classics. But unfortunately, like all exploitation riffs which make the mistake of taking themselves too seriously, The Surfer goes on far too long and eventually exhausts its audience. Cage plays the titlular character, an unnamed office drone who whisks his son (Finn Little) to an idyllic coastal spot in the community where he was raised. The Surfer wants to buy a home overlooking the beach, the very same one in which he lived until age 15, when his father died and his mother moved the family to California. Hoping to take his son out to catch a few waves and an enviable glimpse of their new abode, he's instead met with some hostile 'localism' from the beach's resident muscle heads who are engaged in a bizarre salt-water cult overseen by Scally (Julian McMahon). At this point, The Surfer takes a detour into the sort of nightmare comedy about which you can ask no questions. Why, after being violently rebuffed and humiliated in front of his son, does Cage begin living on the beach in his car? Why does he keep returning to receive fresh injuries from the cult members? Why not just grab an Airbnb near his new home? What's up with the old man, also living out of his car, who's passing around flyers advertising his missing son? And why, after stealing his surfboard, do the cult members claim they've had it for seven years? There's a lot going on in The Surfer — the broken relationships of fathers and sons; the seeping wounds of male ego; mid-life malaise; the unexplained possibility of time loops — but none of it develops into anything. It's long been the safe haven of marginally talented filmmakers to produce a hallucinatory, vaguely existential film of dubious quality and pass it off as the vision of an auteur; but when the quality isn't there, it's all terribly transparent. Instead of interrogating or developing any of the ideas to which the film gestures, Finnegan visits a succession of increasingly outlandish humiliations onto his title character, all of which seem tailor-made for Cage's particular acting style. Watch him drink dirty water from a puddle (and later a public toilet)! Wince as he jumps onto broken glass! Shudder when he pawns his late father's watch for a flat white!The screenplay, by Thomas Martin, doubtless sent its cast and crew into fits of giggles. None of that mirth translates to the screen. By the time Cage swings a live rat by the tail (which he later beats to death and pockets for a snack) and attempts to shoot a dog in the head, you'll likely wish the whole thing would end so you can go home. Sequences which seem designed to provoke a strong emotional reaction pass without impression, boring instead of outraging. The climax is so foregone and uninspiring that your mind may wander to your shopping list in the film's final moments. It's worth mentioning that there's an admirable nastiness to this movie, and one gets the sense that Finnegan would do nicely with a straight, no-frills suspense piece. There's a queasy quality to the beach bullies that wouldn't be out of place in a home invasion movie, and before it goes off the rails, the film chugs along with a nicely suspenseful rhythm. There are even fleeting moments where you see in Finnegan's approach something of the efficient, genre-literate subversion Steven Soderbergh accomplishes so effortlessly. But what's the point of it all? Considering most of its business will presumably be done on streaming, it's odd that The Surfer so frequently tempts its audience to tune out. Unfortunately, the temptation stems not from the visceral impact of the travesties visited upon Cage (none of which truly land) but rather from the intense feeling of déjà vu. For all of its excesses, we've seen this done many times before and frequently better. The Surfer is currently in cinemas.
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
It Was Just an Accident review: Jafar Panahi's 'taut revenge thriller' becomes frontrunner to take Cannes' top prize
After years of imprisonment and travel bans in his native Iran, Jafar Panahi returns to Cannes with a furious but funny revenge thriller that takes aim at oppressive regimes and could scoop the Palme d'Or. The film opens with a long, unbroken, deceptively charming shot of a genial man (Ebrahim Azizi) and his happy, pregnant wife driving in the countryside one evening, with their playful daughter in the back seat. When the car breaks down, the husband persuades a mechanic to tinker with it, but then the mechanic's rumpled colleague Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) recognises a chilling combination of sounds: the uneven footsteps of someone with a limp, and the squeaks of an artificial leg. One of the themes running through the competition films at this year's Cannes Film Festival is how hard it can be to battle your way to justice when the state is standing in your way. In Two Prosecutors, the bureaucracy in Stalin's USSR grinds truth to dust. In Eagles of the Republic, an Egyptian actor finds himself being directed by slimy officials, both at work and at home. Dossier 137 is set in today's France, but even there, a police investigation is obstructed by systems that protect some kinds of wrongdoers more than others. The most immediate and personal of these films is It Was Just an Accident, written and directed by Jafar Panahi. Panahi has repeatedly been imprisoned and banned from film-making in his native Iran, and has been subject to so many travel bans that he hasn't been in Cannes since 2003 (although his films have), so it's hardly surprising that his latest film is so frank about life under an oppressive regime. What may be more surprising is that It Was Just an Accident balances fury with warmth, humour and sympathy for its characters, even when taking on the grimmest possible subject matter. These sounds, which have haunted Vahid's nightmares for years, recall someone he calls Peg Leg, a sadistic interrogator who tortured him while he was incarcerated on trumped-up sedition charges. On impulse, Vahid knocks the man out with a shovel, and stuffs him in a box in the back of his van. He plans to bury Peg Leg alive in the desert – and the film, with its dusty mountain vistas, comes to feel like a classic Western tale of frontier justice. But wait. Vahid was always blindfolded while he was in prison, and so he can't be certain that the man he has caught is Peg Leg, after all. He decides to drive into the city to get a second opinion from a friend who was locked up with him, but even then, things aren't so simple. Before long, Vahid's van is full of former prisoners arguing over the question, including a shrewd wedding photographer (Mariam Afshari), an angry woman (Hadis Pakbaten) who is getting married the next day, and a bitter man (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr) who is more than willing to throttle Vahid's captive, whether he is Peg Leg or not. It Was Just an Accident is a taut and twisting revenge thriller loaded with heavyweight ethical quandaries. It is heartbreakingly explicit about what the well-drawn characters have suffered, but it asks whether they can ever be justified in using the same methods – abduction, torture – as their oppressors. Even if they can be sure that their captive is Peg Leg, do they have the right to execute him? On the other hand, do they have a choice? Have they gone so far that they will be in more trouble if they release him than if they finish the job? More like this:• Gay romance The History of Sound is 'too polite'• The sensational breakout star of The Phoenician Scheme• Alpha review: Outlandish Aids horror is 'maddening' Panahi mixes these issues with a healthy dose of comedy. Vahid and his associates are no bloodthirsty vigilantes, but a bickering bunch who may be foiled in their mission by running out of petrol: at one point, they have to push the van to a garage, including the bride-to-be in her white wedding dress. Meanwhile, they aren't just looking over their shoulders for the secret police, they're being irritated by endemic, low-level corruption. One of several wry examples has two security guards producing their own portable card readers so that they can accept bribes from people who don't have any cash on them. These farcical vignettes aren't just light relief, though. They bolster Panahi's powerful point that heroes and villains aren't all monumental figures in uniform. Those who have committed the worst evils, those who have endured them, and those who have stood back and let those evils happen, can all be seen on any sunny city street, getting on with their ordinary lives with friends and relatives. Panahi puts these terrifying yet touchingly humane insights into a film that is as fast-moving and unpretentious as any crime caper. He could well go back to Iran with Cannes' top prize, the Palme d'Or, after the festival finishes this weekend. ★★★★☆ -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
