Cutter's Way (1981)
After aimlessly scrolling through the bowels of Amazon Prime for a while, this film popped up. Jeff Bridges is in it, so you know it can't be all bad and there's John Heard. What an actor that man is, you find yourself thinking, in fact, it's a crime that Heard wasn't a bigger star than he was, I can't remember a performance of his I didn't like. And then you watch this.
The plot synopsis makes mention of a neo-noir thriller in which a man is falsely accused of murder and goes about finding the real perpetrator of this crime. Not a bad premise and with those two actors leading the cast, this could be another one of those forgotten gems of retro-cinema. Unfortunately, as you may by now have guessed, this was not the case. In fact, I'm still trying to make sense of the whole thing. While it is true that the film does begin with Jeff Bridges being a witness to an apparent murder, the police investigation doesn't have much gusto behind it. Sample dialogue:
Police: "We know you were there, Richard"
Bridges: "Yeah well I didn't do it"
Police: "Ok we're going to bring in the victim's sister. You can tell her."
That was about the extent of this seeming false accusation. Not only was this a gross violation of Bridges' civil rights and a flagrant procedural mishap (placing a falsely accused man with a recently bereaved family member), but it somehow didn't matter because the sister in question, despite the brutal murder of her only sibling a mere two days prior, is inescapably horny for Bridges' and his wily ways. Not only is she horny for Bridges, she is even hornier for a revenge / black mail plot hatched to catch the real killer - whom they suspect to be a local oil magnate. Why do they suspect this man of murder for no apparent reason? Well, because Bridges sees the man in a crowded fiesta and yells "that's him" to his friend. Which sets them down a path of righteous score-settling.
This brings us to John Heard's character - the titular 'Cutter'. He has an eye patch, a wooden leg, and quite the anti-social personality. His performance is, shall we say, not lacking in exaggeration. He is essentially vile to all and sundry, perpetually drunk, and has a rather large chip on his shoulder due to his service in the Vietnam war. With the introduction of his character, the film starts to unravel itself into more of a character study about veterans who have to re-assimilate into the world after perpetuating horrific acts upon other humans in the name of war. However, none of it is handled subtly or even really with any degree of empathy. As a result, it's hard to feel anything for this person other than contempt. This could have been salvaged perhaps by a better performance, but Heard just goes full ham in this one. He's got two speeds - maniacal laughter while drunk, or unintelligible screaming while drunk. Neither lands.
There are many other confusing elements to the story of this film. For one, it is never made clear why Jeff Bridges is friends with Cutter in the first place. They seem to openly hate each other for much of the film. Secondly, the two men seem to live together with a woman who they are both having sex with. Unless Cutter is her partner and he can't satisfy her, because of his missing leg, so is being entertained as some sort of cuckold husband, I don't know. None of it is made clear. Thirdly, Jeff Bridges looks, behaves and lives like a scruffy, destitute, hippie drifter gigolo (he is paid for sex in the opening scene) but somehow works as a luxury yacht salesman who hangs out almost exclusively at a polo club. Cutter also hangs out at the polo club, despite looking like Snake Plissken and sounding like Tom Waits gargling razorblades. It's all so bizarre.
Then there is the dialogue, which tries it's absolute damndest to be hard boiled and interesting but again just comes across as messy and ill-fitting. Cutter is supposed to be, so it would seem, an anti-hero whose actions and words are all justified because he served in Vietnam, which given the horrendous nature of serving in the military would be fair, but when he growls things like "It's the everyday where I need to drink, tragedy I take straight", it feels hackneyed rather than poignant. In fact this is true of the film as a whole. There could have been something poignant, something deeply emotive, about a man coming to terms with life after losing everything in an unjust war. There could have been something interesting about the weird relationships these people seem to have with each other, but the attempt to crowbar any of that into a vague murder mystery / love triangle noir storyline completely undermines the entire attempt. That and John Heard's performance, which is just too affected to be in any way effective.
It is almost as if this film should have been split into two separate films altogether, that would be the only plausible reason a lot of these elements would exist in the same film. It's like they've taken characters from two completely different stories and simply merged them. Maybe there was a clerical error at the office and two screenplays were bound into one? Why else would you have an alcoholic screaming pirate, with no discernible income, hanging at an elite country club? None of it quite makes sense. I will say that it's worth a watch for the end scene where Cutter steals a horse. Before the days of HD freeze frames this wasn't such an issue and wasn't considered in the same way it is now, but the stunt double for the sequence doesn't remotely look like Heard. He doesn't even have an eyepatch. For the spark of nostalgia that hilarious, simple moment provides it might be worth sitting through the rest. Overall though, this film is all over the place and takes some talented actors, and by virtue the audience, down a long and winding road to nowhere.
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