Some successful actors start to downshift when they hit their 60s, but Nicolas Cage, 61, still works with the frequency of a man who has a hellhound or a collections agency on his trail.
Cage is the best reason to watch “The Surfer,” a deliberately punishing drama in which he plays the title role. His character is an apparently successful wheeler-dealer who’s taking a day off to catch some waves at a beach close to a house he hopes to buy. His plan runs afoul of an aggressive group of surfers who advise him the spot is for “locals only.” But he is a local, he protests.
That may or may not be true. And the surf gang, who want him gone, don’t care either way, as they demonstrate with mounting violence. Cage has a penchant for characters who take a lot of punishment, like in the “Wicker Man” remake (2006) or the first half or so of “Mandy” (2018), and here his character just keeps coming back for more.
Is he crazy? Maybe. But something else is going on. There’s an older man hanging out at the beach handing out fliers about his lost son — and didn’t Cage’s character first come to the beach with his own teenage son? The surfer is increasingly addled by visions that come to him in harrowing split-second blackouts. The director Lorcan Finnegan drops other intimations of a time loop, reminiscent of Chris Marker’s “La Jetée.” But if this movie leaves Cage adrift, he doesn’t seem at all uncomfortable about it.
The Surfer
Rated R for language and some violence. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.
