Cage always plays himself - but the best actors often do

The star of Con Air’ would likely never admit it but many of his greatest roles resemble funhouse mirror reflections of Nicolas Cage’, writes Xan Brooks. And therein lies the magic

- Xan Brooks

The Surfer is a wild, rocky, beach-bound B-movie that pits a hapless, frazzled loner against a band of local bullies. The loner wants to ride the big waves and make a new home on the coast, but he’s been confined to the car park and is slowly losing his mind. “Before you surf you must suffer,” he is told by the bullies, just at the point when his holiday goes to hell. Soon he’s drinking out of puddles and eating out of bins. He’s bitten by a rat and crapped on by a parrot. The man’s both a joke and a danger, a victim and a hero. Is it irrelevant to mention that he’s played by Nicolas Cage?

Conceivably there are other actors who could have starred in The Surfer, Lorcan Finnegan’s wonderfully punch-drunk new thriller, and these might have fit more neatly with the tale. The Surfer is set in Western Australia and the hero himself is a local boy. This means that the script has to perform several ungainly pivots in order to justify Cage’s presence. “I thought you were American,” remarks a passing photographer, which provides the cue for the actor to explain that he has actually spent years in California and now wants to move back to his old family home on the cliff.

Cage, like Connery and Schwarzenegger, rarely bothers with accents and tends to burst out of each role like the Incredible Hulk in a wetsuit. No script can restrain him; he has to be who he is. The Surfer accepts this and makes the necessary adjustments. The hero, it turns out, is never even named. He’s Nicolas Cage with a surfboard: this is the film’s USP.