The change in esteem did not signal a change in Cage’s performance style. He still makes incredible choices. Rather it’s the filmmakers who have changed, finally figuring out how to best use Cage’s incredible talents. That’s particularly true in The Surfer, which casts Cage as a normal guy, an American square amongst Australian oddballs.

Breaking Away

At the start of The Surfer, Cage’s character, credited only as “the Surfer,” steps out of his luxury car and, along with his son (“the Kid,” played by Finn Little) heads down to an Australian beach to surf. The Surfer regales his reluctant son with stories about the glory of surfing this beach, of beloved memories he built before the death of his own father, which led him to leave Australia for America.

No sooner do they arrive at the water than a local called Bulldog (Alexander Bertrand) rushes onto the beach to confront them. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” he barks. The Surfer’s explanations—that he used to live here and is in the process of purchasing his father’s old house mere meters away—don’t dissuade Bulldog. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” he insists.

In part, The Surfer tells the story of the Surfer’s clashes with Scally, Bulldog, and his men, revelers who spout Joe Rogan-esque nonsense about masculinity while chasing away outsiders and other undesirables, mostly an unhoused man called Curly (Michael Abercromby). However, director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin borrow heavily from Australian New Wave films, most notably 1975’s Wake in Fright, to craft an existential odyssey in which the ordeal strips the Surfer down to his essence.

As the guide on this odyssey, The Surfer uses Cage in a way we rarely see these days. He’s presented as the normal guy, the square who seems more at home in corporate offices and suburban neighborhoods than he does on the beach with Scally’s zen partiers.

Of course that veneer of normalcy falls away during the Surfer’s ordeal. Refusing to go no further than the parking lot between the beach and the house, going delirious from the sun and baffled by what may be a vast conspiracy pitted against him, the Surfer loses his identity. Finnegan’s surreal approach, full of zooms, close-ups, and unlikely edits, documents the Surfer’s undoing, as he becomes more and more like Curly. More and more like his father.