The triggers for Nicolas Cage’s vengeful ire have grown increasingly obscure of late. Normally, he’s battling to get back his wife (2018’s Mandy), his daughter (2012’s Stolen), or his granddaughter (2011’s Drive Angry). Now he’s battling to get back his favourite hog (2021’s Pig) and, with The Surfer, his favourite longboard. Yet, these films, inevitably, offer the same sell: people come for the Cage-ness of it all, the bug-eyed grimace, the air karate chop, the erratic, ever-escalating inflection. It’s the inevitable metric by which they’re judged.
But as Cage grows more violent over smaller transgressions, directors have offered him a little more room to work. The Surfer is what you might call a slow-burn Cage. There’s the manic, hollering prize at the end (and even a line of dialogue worthy of a future meme), but also plenty of the actor’s more undervalued speciality – the expression of gargantuan helplessness, the look of a fish who’s been thrown to land and left to die.
