India, Sept. 18 -- Hollywood star Nicolas Cage has built a career out of walking the tightrope between the absurd and the sublime, and The Surfer gives him another chance to teeter gloriously on that edge. Directed by Lorcan Finnegan and written by Thomas Martin, the film pairs Nicolas with Julian McMahon in a menacingly strange battle of wills, played out against the scorching Australian coast.

The film is set in Lunar Bay, a picturesque beach where locals enforce a brutal rule: "Don't live here, don't surf here." Into this environment arrives Nicolas' unnamed character, a man who dreams of buying a home by the sea and riding the waves every morning. He insists he was born in Australia but spent most of his life in California - a fact t...