Cutter's Way

Plot synopsis:
Cutter's way is hard to put in a category. It's a delicate blend of thriller, comedy, drama, conspiracy, buddy movie (I hate that term, too), incredibly moving acting, incredible noir-ish (not noir) cinematography and one of the most haunting scores in cinema. Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is the aimless playboy yin to Alex Cutter's hardcore Vietnam veteran yang and Moe (Lisa Eichorn) is Alex's cynical wife. All three drink and exist in a modest house in a Santa Barbara neighborhood in the 70's. Until one rainy night in an alley, where Bone steers his foreign convertible when the engine dies, and half-sees a man depositing a woman's body in a trash can. Alex takes Bone and Moe to a parade hours after Bone is grilled by detectives. "That's him," a weary Bone tells Cutter, when oil magnate JJ Cord rides by on a white horse....
...and this is where it takes off. Cutter enlists the victim's sister and goes on a single-minded plan to extract vengeance.
How this is accomplished is the wildest and poignant tale you're ever going to see and the atmosphere is Lynchian, but pre-Lynchian. The plot is not conventionally excuted and this a treat for the willing. Again, a career best for John Heard as the intense Cutter, Jeff Bridges is simply incredible, and the gifted Lisa Eichorn evokes the gamut of raw emotions. Not a noir film, but a cult film in every sense of the word. Well worth renting or owning. Perhaps director Ivan Passer's finest.

Tags: revenge, neo noir, murder

Review:
The pathetic human condition personified in Cutter, Bone, and Mo is so exquisitely rendered as to be tragic...only salvaged by the clear-eyed wit and insight of John Heard's Cutter and the tempered and logical cynicism and indifference offered up by Bone(Jeff Bridges)as the balance that only these begrudging friends could provide each other.
This movie works as a crime thriller, a portrait of the underbelly of American culture most evidenced in its loss of confidence and embrace of cynicism that came to the surface post-Vietnam...but most successfully as a great character-driven love story and tragedy..
Then you have a great performance from John Heard and a great screenplay that obviously had a tremendous novel behind it.If you like those gritty late 70s early 80s California noir movies like Straight Time, Who'll Stop The Rain and Chinatown, this is as good as any of those.
It makes me wonder what Jeff Bridges thinks about on the set of Iron Man 2 - I've never been a huge fan but the guy did a string of great dramas in the 80s like Fabulous Baker Boys, American Heart and this.
It is also a great love story.I always end up writing "...you've read the other comments so you know what this is about" but Cutter and Bone is so many things, it cannot be pinned down easily.As noted in the favorable reviews here, this is chock full of great film acting that moves the story along as well as making come alive.
What movie was he watching?Adrift in post-Vietnam America, Cutter finally finds something in life that has meaning; the murder of a young hitchhiker.But any meaning is too much for the damaged Cutter who becomes relentless in the pursuit of a possible killer who also is of the wealthy, powerful elite that sent OPS (other people's sons) to Vietnam.
However, Jeff Bridges yet again proves his credentials by turning in a beautifully nuanced performance as an unattractive, self-absorbed failed playboy in counterpoint to Heard's righteous crippled Vietnam veteran.This is a companion piece to 'Chinatown' in its study of corrupt power structures, but is more intimate and believable (and 'Chinatown' is superb).
Whilst Bridges won't accept that he has witnessed the ultimate, bleak truth of US power relations until the film's abrupt, punchy end, Heard knows the truth intuitively and automatically because he understands and hates the world from the the start.
I don't have much to add to the positive reviews here except to say that Cutter's Way repeatedly alludes to Herman Melville, especially Moby Dick -- A character explicitly refers to Moby Dick early in the film; Cutter has a false limb, like Captain Ahab; his wife's name is "Mo"; he says, "Thar she blows" when he sees the villain's huge office building; after that part of the pursuit, he angrily shoots at an animal in the water; the whole story takes place in and around boats, and it begins at the "El Encantado" (Melville wrote "The Encantadas, or the Enchanted Isles").What does all this add up to?
I don't know exactly, but this film is an excellent mix of character studies, love stories, and suspense -- with great dialog and performances.I watch it every few years and am never disappointed, except by the fact that one of the main characters (the sister) suddenly and permanently disappears, as if she'd never been in the movie at all.
He hates the fat cats-feeling that they conned him and others into patriotically serving while they stayed home, and he resents his best friend Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) who avoided the war and continues to avoid any involvement or commitment.
His commitment ultimately gets Bone to take his first moral stand and finish what his friend started, doing it "Cutter's Way".Like "Fat City" (another of Jeff Bridges' early films) "Cutter's Way" is more appreciated now than at the time of its release.
Thematically "Cutter's Way" is a political film-both anti-war and anti-power; very much in the tradition of "Chinatown" and the world of Raymond Chandler adaptations.This film is essentially a character study with an expressionistic ending.
Cutter's other remaining friend George (Arthur Rosenberg) is equally well crafted but more secondary to the story.A fifth character (the dead cheerleader's older sister played by Ann Dusenberry) appears to be a victim of the post-production process as she simply disappears without explanation about 20 minutes before the film's end.
The fact that we are left, in the end, radically uncertain whether the man Bridges and Heard are pursuing - and whom Bridges presumably actually kills - committed the crime or not cannot seriously be presented as a dramaturgical or moral strength of the film.
After being portrayed for an hour and a half as being doggedly and single-mindedly determined to carefully coordinate the exposure of the Cobb character as a murderer, Cutter's "plan" to do so turns out in the end to consist in nothing more than to go hobbling wildly around the man's house, run away from his bodyguards, jump on a horse he finds in his stables, and then fling himself randomly through some French windows, promptly breaking his own neck.
I have no idea whether this scene was present in the original novel, but I must honestly say that this risible spectacle of the hero careening wildly through the garden party - emotionally "beefed up" by some cheap and predictable "subjective camera" shots intended to positively FORCE the viewer to identify with Cutter in a way that his actions themselves make it pretty much impossible to do - seems to me a textbook example of directorial desperation and the frantic attempt to give direction and conclusion, by the sheer illusory spectacle of velocity, to a film that really wasn't going anywhere at all.
If anyone ever asks if a mediocre script can be turned into a great movie through the performances of the actors, simply point at Cutter's Way. While Jeff Bridges and John Heard have given other memorable performances, combined with the once in a career performance of Lisa Eichhorn this film rises above itself and achieves a level of success that could otherwise not have been expected.
Released in 1981, the original novel ("Cutter and Bone") was published in the Seventies and the film version positively oozes the cynicism and self-absorption that permeated America in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate.The plot is centered around crippled Vietnam vet Alex Cutter (John Heard), his best friend Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges), and Cutter's wife Mo (Lisa Eichman) who live in sunny Santa Barbara.
As others here have written, she gave a phenomenal performance in this film, as did John Heard and Jeff Bridges.Although I never read the novel it was based on, and can't find it (it's out of print), it's probably just as well.
It's a gem of a film one of the Best from the eighties, Jeff Bridges, And John Heard give fine Performances, As the troubled friends Who get a lot more that they bargain for.
Bridges plays Richard bone a boat salesman, and somewhat gigolo who on a rainswept night, catches a glimpse of a man dumping a dead body in an alleyway ,Bridges then becomes implicated in a Mysterious murder investigation, Heard and bridges attend the towns parade festivities when bridges catches a glimpse of the killer In the parade, who as it turns out is the towns local tycoon, Bridges is convinced that it's him, Bridges aided by his radical Vietnam- vet pal Alex Cutter,(played to the hilt like an alcoholic pirate!
(John Heard) as well as the victims sister,Decide to blackmail the tycoon who may or may not be the culprit.Jack Nietzsche Contributes a strange and effective score that has a distinctive down Mexico way feel to it, Cutter's Way is a superb, emotional and Relentless film Which captivates you until the final reel.
The logline reads "Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter." What makes this film so entertaining is the dynamic relationship between Alex Cutter (John Heard), Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges), and Mo (Lisa Eichorn).
This adaptation of the Newton Thornburg novel "Cutter and Bone" stars Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn in its principal roles.
That man just might be filthy rich J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliott), and Alex relentlessly prods Richard into doing something with this knowledge."Cutter's Way" is more of a character study than anything else, taking a blunt, unflinching look at our three flawed protagonists.
But it's often Heard that steals the show; his Cutter is a force of nature much of the time, although the character is not without humanity.Czech-born director Ivan Passer gives us a film that is noticeably low key and slowly paced, so it won't appeal to all tastes.
The car later wildly drives past him.The next day a woman's body is discovered and because Bone's car is nearby he is dragged in as a suspect.Alex Cutter is a one eyed, one legged, one armed Vietnam veteran left bitter and twisted after the war.
In fact, Heard's explosion of anger on the Santa Monica pier is among the scariest, most convincing expressions of pent-up emotion that I've seen in many years of movie watching.The three lead performances are outstanding, and in particular those of the raging and damaged Vietnam veteran played by John Heard and the desperately sad, poignantly tragic, and utterly convincing Mo (his long-suffering wife) played by Lisa Eichhorn.
Their best friend Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is a witness to a murder, and he thinks that the killer is this powerful oil tycoon JJ Cord (Stephen Elliott).
I want to see how other people see life and their representation on camera.Overall, Cutter's Way was not a great film, but the ending redeemed itself in someway that I will never be able to explain.
(Richard Bone and Alex Cutter are the names of the two main characters, played by Jeff Bridges and John Heard respectively.) Heard plays a Viet Nam veteran who has come back from Nam missing an arm, a leg, and an eye.
Heard's wife Mo, subtly and excellently played by Lisa Eichhorn, has turned to sullen drink because of the collapse of her love life and the wild ravings of her husband, who is also becoming an alcoholic and gives constant demonstrations of rage by crazily smashing things (such as driving intentionally into his neighbour's parked car just for the hell of it, when half drunk).
The movie is not really a whodunit not because we never discover who done it but because we don't care, the movie doesn't care, because at some point Cutter and Bone, lower-class thirtysomethings with broken lives, nowhere to go, and their friendship permanently shattered by something that involved Bone and Cutter's wife, barge into JJ Cord's mansion uninvited, and somehow, in a strange quiet almost surreal way, one-legged Cutter is suddenly riding a white horse through the gardens in a frenzy, stomping party guests and upturning tables in his furious path, like he's back in the Vietnam jungle and running not away from something like enemy soldiers will run from enemy fire but towards it in a final mad dash, and out of the bushes and trees of JJ Cord's mansion emerges Cutter's Way, the movie now pure sublime and primeval, going out in a final upflare of stubborn and dying revenge.Cutter confronts JJ Cord and when he puts on his mirror shades, we understand that we're looking at the personification of Uncle Sam, so that he may not be guilty for that one girl's murder but he's guilty for something, and more, that Cutter is there to strike not at the mysterious old man, but through him, to strike "...all that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick [...] and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him".
It starts out by introducing you two three off-kilter characters--Jeff Bridges as the drifting playboy Bone; John Heard as the crippled Cutter, a man of uncompromising rage and a razor-sharp tongue; and Lisa Eichorn as the Cutter's terminally depressed wife Mo. Within the first half-hour of meeting these pathetic folk, the narrative drops in a murder mystery: a girl's body is found in a garbage can and Bone is the chief suspect.
Operating as a kind of sequel to Pakula's "Parallax View", the film stars John Heard as Alex Cutter, an angry Vietnam veteran who's returned from what he now regards as a meaningless war minus an arm, an eye and a leg.The casting of Heard is significant.
With its tremendous sense of time and place, its trio of disillusioned characters and an overriding atmosphere of despair and disaffection, "Cutter's Way" is a powerful and often poignant murder mystery in which paranoia, bitterness and cynicism are never far away.Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is driving through an alleyway one night when his car stalls and through the rain he sees a man dumping something into a trash can.
After having been questioned by the police, he gets released and later joins his friend Alex Cutter (John Heard) at a street parade where he sees the man that he believes he saw in the alleyway the night before.
Bone doesn't know who the man is but crippled Vietnam War veteran Cutter does and immediately wants to follow through on this lead.J.J.Cord (Stephen Elliott) is a powerful oil tycoon who Cutter has known about for many years.
Cutter had lost a leg, an eye and part of one of his arms in the War and returned home angry and bitter and also full of hate for some of the powerful people in society (such as J.J.Cord) who never suffer in the same way that the veterans do.
Ultimately, it's the performances by Heard, Bridges and Eichhorn and their memorable characters who are so redolent of the time in which they existed, that make this movie a work of considerable substance..
I believe this is because of political changes and advances in movie-making rather than any deficiency in Cutter's Way.John Heard's acting produces one of the most memorable characters in movie history, the tragic Alex Cutter, an embittered and crippled Vietnam Veteran, a man who both resents and exploits his physical condition, living a self-destructive lifestyle seething with the unquenched fury that epitomises the helpless rage felt by so many survivors of the Vietnam conflict.Despite its rather chaotic throughline, the movie is about Alex Cutter's personal war against the wealthy J J Cord, whom he holds responsible for the unsolved murder of a teenage cheerleader and who symbolises the insulating privilege of those guilty for the woes visited upon society's underclass.
But his obsession has its price - Cutter's lover, Mo, is killed in a fire that could be seen as either arson or suicide, which acts as a catalyst that drives Cutter to exact revenge on J J Cord.The movie culminates in a powerful juxtaposition, where Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is finally able to have a private conversation with the disaffected J J Cord as Alex Cutter (John Heard) charges apocalyptically through a lawn party on a white steed before crashing tragically through the window into the very room where Bone and Cord are talking.
It took me awhile to understand exactly what relationship there was between Cutter, Bone and Mo, but once I figured that out, the rest of the movie became clear.The film is an odd whodunit...Bone (Jeff Bridges) is a young gigolo/yachtsman with no direction to his life who witnesses someone dumping a body in an alleyway and then thinks he sees the same person in a parade, the person being one of the most powerful and influential people in the town.
She later dies in a suspicious fire that prompts Cutter to action and he and Bone confront the suspected man, and Bone finally makes a decision...about Cutter, the suspect, and everything else.Jeff Bridges is excellent in the film but it is really John Heard's performance as one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged war veteran Cutter that makes the film.
"Cutter's Way" (1991) is a great film by director Ivan Passer.
What really makes this film work is the acting by the main trio (John Heard as Alex Cutter, Jeff Bridges as Richard Bone (Cutter's best friend), and Lisa Eichhorn as Maureen Cutter, 'Mo' (Cutter's wife)).
Jeff Bridges' Richard Bone witnesses the late-night dumping of a murdered woman, and thinks the murderer may be a wealthy oil mogul; his friend Alex Cutter hatches a plan to tease out a confession by threatening blackmail; Cutter's wife Mo (Lisa Eichhorn) keeps much of her thoughts and her sadness to herself behind a fixed but fragile smile.
Alex Cutter (John Heard) is a war torn Vietnam vet who lost an eye, a leg and an arm while there.
He is not the most sympathetic character you will find on film but as we come to know him there is something there.Cutter's friend is Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges), a small time gigolo who's not the brightest crayon in the box.
The characters are almost uniformly dislikable, from the abusive Rich (John Heard), to the egotistical Alex (Jeff Bridges), to the self-pitying Mo (Lisa Eichorn), to the slimy George (Arthur Rosenburg)-- there is no one left to root for.
The characters are almost uniformly dislikable, from the abusive Rich (John Heard), to the egotistical Alex (Jeff Bridges), to the self-pitying Mo (Lisa Eichorn), to the slimy George (Arthur Rosenburg)-- there is no one left to root for.
Cutter's Way. A very unusual, very unconventional film which can not seem to decide if it wants to be a character study/mood piece or thriller.