If you were unfortunate enough to catch director Clive Fleury’s Sons of Summer with the hope of watching an entertaining movie about friendship with a dash of adventure and thrill, then you are probably cursing your stars for wasting one and a half hours of your life. I can totally sympathize with your feelings, as I had the misfortune myself. The reason you are here is most likely because the atrociously bad movie leaves us with a kind of mysterious ending, which raises a question. In this article, you are going to find an answer to that, which will hopefully take away some of your frustration.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Movie?
On paper, a tale of four surfer friends planning to go on an adventure as a tribute to their surfer dads doesn’t sound too bad. In fact, one of the friends, who is the de facto main character of the movie, being involved in some shady drug-related stuff adds a spicy angle to it. But the simplest of dishes can get ruined in the hands of the wrong chef. I have always felt that for any movie, the craft is more important than the story itself. It is never really about what it is, but always about how it is being told to the audience. And that is exactly where Sons of Summer fails miserably.
Who Is Sean, And Why Is He In Trouble?
Sean is, of course, our main guy, who has been trying to get out of the world of crime now that he is in a steady relationship with surfing shop worker Katie, who is really nice and understanding. Life hasn’t been kind to Sean. His surfer dad, Steve, aka Boo, was murdered when Sean was a child. His mother left, and he was raised by a man named Pete, who loved him but was involved in criminal activities. It can be assumed that Sean got into the world of crime thanks to Pete’s influence.
At the start of Sons of Summer, though, Sean is completely out of it. His friend Kane, who runs a surfing shop near the beach, pitches the idea of going on a trip to Austinville, where Boo, Kane’s father, and two other friends of theirs went thirty years ago. Kane also wants to involve Clay and Jack, the sons of those other two friends. Sean admires the idea, but at the same time, Rick, a man he knows from his life of crime, tries to convince him to do one last job for Pete. Despite being skeptical, Sean gives in because he believes he owes it to Pete. The job is to steal a bag full of drugs worth millions, which belongs to local businessman and mobster Dom Cooper. Dom is a sleazy man who acts like he owns everything, and he tries to hit on Katie at a party thrown by him. During the same party, Sean does the job and flies off in a fast car. He gets chased by Dom’s right-hand man, Frank, played by Boba Fett actor Temuera Morrison. Sean does manage to get away and lay low for the night at Kane’s. But the next morning, two local detectives knock at his door and take him away for questioning, thanks to his history and also security camera footage of a man whose physical appearance matches Sean’s. He is later released on bail by Katie’s lawyer friend, Lauren.
Does The Adventure Happen?
Sure, it does. In the middle of all the Sean-related drama and the director’s indomitable urge to turn the movie into a surfing commercial, Clay manages to convince a reluctant Jack to go on the trip. Jack’s reluctance stems from his disapproval of Sean because of the latter’s criminal activities. Meanwhile, Dom unsurprisingly gets furious, and Frank wastes no time doing the needful to find his boss’ stolen drugs and also the people who have stolen them. From the security footage of the party, Frank suspects Katie had something to do with it, and he ransacks her house while she hides in the cupboard. Through an informant, he learns about Pete and promptly visits him. Pete refuses to say a word or give away anything about Sean, and he ends up dead at the hands of a merciless Frank.
In an unfortunate turn of events, Kane suffers an accident while surfing with Jack and Clay and ends up at the hospital. In spite of that, the other three decide to go on the trip to Austinville. Just before leaving, Katie gets mad at Sean for getting himself into trouble again. On the way to Austinville, Sean gets the news of Pete’s death from the radio and majorly freaks out.
Do Sean And Katie Find A Happy Ending?
Upon reaching Austinville, Sean goes full Prima Donna on Clay and Jack. He visits Rick, who also happens to be in the same place. Sean asks Rick to give the drugs back, but Rick claims that he has already done that. Sean doesn’t believe him and warns him that the people they stole from are coming to get Rick.
With the movie heading towards the inevitable showdown between our hero, Sean, who acts and talks like a Charlie Hunnam knock-off, and Boba Fett Frank, who has gone insane and violently killed Dom after the latter questioned his abilities, So it is quite natural for Frank to head towards Austinville, as his informant has managed to find out about Rick. The only other major character left to leave for Austinville is Katie, but after hearing some great words about her bad-boy lover from her lawyer friend Lauren, she decides to visit and surprise him on the trip.
Just when you think Sons of Summer couldn’t possibly get worse, the director suddenly decides to unleash this random extended romantic plot upon Jack and Michelle, another surfer who works at a local op shop. In the director’s defense, at least this romance seems more convincing than the one between Sean and Katie. After some more surfing commercials and a heavy dose of Jack and Michelle’s PG-13 romance, we finally get back to the main plot as Frank finally reaches Rick’s. In what I consider the only cool scene of the movie, Rick offers Frank a glass of whiskey despite knowing that his doom is inevitable because, come on, it is the freaking Boba Fett. After taking care of Rick, Frank conveniently finds Katie and kidnaps her in order to lure Sean.
Sean now has to go full Rambo on Frank, but he obviously can’t do it alone, so Jack and Clay decide to join him. Yes, Sean is the one who has ruined the trip with his own troubles, but your friends can’t always be perfect, right? Although it doesn’t make any sense why Michelle would join the cause after knowing Jack for only a day or two and not knowing anybody else, Anyway, let us not go into things that clearly don’t matter. The invincible Frank is conveniently owned by the newly formed A-team, led by our boy Sean, and they manage to rescue Katie by the end.
Montages of the dads in their younger days play, and we get a glimpse of Sean’s dad, Boo, and we also see him randomly getting murdered. Cut back to the present. Sean and Katie have a beautiful wedding in the water, with everyone else celebrating around them. Frank looks at them through a binocular from afar before visiting Book’s grave and leaving a garland. In case you are wondering why Frank would do so, here’s how I feel: Frank is the one who murdered Boo—a kill that was ordered by Dom. I am assuming that, like Sean, Boo was also involved in some shady activities. Years later, Frank had a change of heart, which was evident from his killing Dom, and in the end, he chose to let Sean find happiness. Although this doesn’t explain why he would go to the trouble of kidnapping Katie and having the showdown with Sean and company rather than just walking away, So maybe the director deliberately threw a curveball at us so that we keep thinking about this god-awful tragedy in the name of a movie. But I am going to draw the curtain and do everything to forget this movie, and I advise you to do the same as well.
There’s one thing I would like to get off my chest, though. In the very last scene, we get to see Boo’s grave, which reads his date of birth as the 5th of July, 1972, and his date of death as the 19th of February, 1992. This effectively means Boo was even less than twenty when he died and also fathered a child. But the younger Boo we saw in the video was played by an actor who looked at least forty; no offense. In a movie as terrible as this one, I probably shouldn’t bring up anything about logic, but this was way too much to digest.
