THE SURFER is one of the movies from recent years that I’ve meant to get around to because it seemed like a promising Nicolas Cage role. It’s from the Irish director Lorcan Finnegan (VIVARIUM) and writer Thomas Martin, set and filmed in Australia, and Cage plays a guy who grew up there and has returned to try to buy a house his late father used to own.
I did not notice until looking at Wikipedia for this review that Cage’s character doesn’t have a name, he’s just “The Surfer.” He seems more like a guy with a name, because he has a complicated life: investment firm job he needs to hurry up and return to, teenage son (Finn Little, THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD) he’s struggling to bond with, wife (voice of Brenda Meaney, FEAR THE NIGHT) he’s separated from and wants to get back together with but she’s with somebody else, constantly on the phone hassling his mortgage broker (Greg McNeill) and real estate agent (Rahel Romahn, FURIOSA) about how to raise the money to outbid the other potential buyer. And yeah, when he was young he travelled around the world living in a van, finding places to surf, writing for surf zines, but he gave that up a million years ago for a family and a job and everything. There is no evidence he deserves to be called “The Surfer.” But his son surfs so he wants to bring him out to this beach from his childhood and surprise him by showing him this house.
Trouble is, before they even get to the water a guy named Pitbull (surfer and Muay Thai fighter turned actor Alexander Bertrand) tells him, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here!” Locals only. While the Surfer presses the issue the leader of the Bay Boys, Scally (the late Julian McMahon, FANTASTIC FOUR 2005), comes over saying, “No need for all this fuss,” like he’s the reasonable guy who’s gonna straight this out. But with that tone he basically threatens The Surfer and says, “You gotta know when to back down.” So he does. (read the rest of this shit…)
THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD is a movie I was highly anticipating ever since I first read it was in the works. When it finally came out as one of these pandemic same-day-on-HBO-Max releases and it turned out it wasn’t quite the A+ movie I was hoping for, it kind of entered and left my consciousness without much incident. But I did think it was a cool movie taken on its own terms, and worthy of documentation with a review. And then it started to seem better the more I wrote about it.
