A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. When he is humiliated by a group of locals, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising and pushes him to his breaking point. The eponymous Surfer (Nicolas Cage) returns to his hometown in order to repurchase his childhood home for his family. He takes his teen son, The Kid (Finn Little), to the nearby, idyllic Australian beach where he spent most of his youth, intending to go surfing. The beach is defended by surfing localists led by Scally (Julian McMahon), who is a self-styled guru determined to protect the beach from outsider non-residents.

In 1874, Will Andrews, the naive and idealistic son of a pastor, has dropped out of Harvard and travelled to Butcher's Crossing, a tiny frontier town in Kansas built on the buffalo hide trade. Sold on the romanticism of going on a buffalo hunt, Will falls in with Miller, an intense and stoic but experienced buffalo hunter who spins him a tale of a remote Colorado pass where one of the few remaining massive herds can be found. Though warned about Miller and the folly of this enterprise, Will puts up all of his money to fund the expedition.