The Surfer

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

An above average film at best. Bullying is the order of the day apparently, and you'll achieve self fulfilment, enlightenment and you can join the club! Acting is ok, as per normal by Nicholas Cage, but the storyline is very predictable, and thus the constant bullying becomes boring. I may watch it again, but I certainly wouldn't rush to!

I love Nick Cage and he does not disappoint in The Surfer. Mandy is one of my favorite Nick Cage movie. I'm glad it wasn't a revenge flick or he saves his son, it's a ritual - a right of passage, and I dig that vibe until the end, which was a bit of a let down for me. I would preferred something subtler, but thats not gonna happen in a Nick Cage movie.

This is a very weird and frankly stupid movie. The core concept feels unrealistic from the start, especially the idea of consent as it is presented here, and the character behavior makes little sense throughout. The decision to set the entire film in a single location does not work at all in this case, and instead of feeling focused or tense, it just feels limiting and empty. By the end, there is no payoff or emotional reward for the viewer, which makes the whole experience feel pointless.Nicolas Cage is the only bright spot. He does what he usually does, leaning fully into his persona, and he is genuinely good in the role. Unfortunately, no performance can save a bad script and a fundamentally weak idea. Strong acting alone is not enough to justify sitting through this.

Such a film-narrated disappointment. I would have been even more disappointed if it wouldn`t be Nicolas Cage performing his guts out of this mess of screenwriting. Whats the worst thing about a revenge movie, right: A non developing character. So I watched a fictious chacter, being held captive in a great edited and beautifully filmed torment of abuse and psychological castration by the "bad beachboys". Felt like this is a "I-wanna-be-too-woke" - provocation to all my senses by using all the "non-woke" clichees without any meta level but still trying to do a balancing act between "inside and outside character" of a "confused idiot". How do you call people that dance around fires, paint themselves, take peyote and want to generate a cult, while doing barbecue, surfing and enyoing a California Beach? Young Actors! It`s a mess of written effects, written clichees without any more solution left as being painful to watch because I always felt whats coming next. Cage is always amazing, but it didn`t need that kind of misleading movie-crafting which was a intended waste of my time for me. (Some fluid optics, wideangle lenses and shaky camera moves couldn't save it but felt okay-ish!)