Forgotten Film Friday: Cutter's Way

A retrospective by Brooks Rich

One night in Santa Barbara Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) witnesses the murder of a teenager girl while his car is broken down. He immediately becomes a person of interest for the police. His friend Alex Cutter (a career best John Heard) is an alcoholic Vietnam vet who believes in Bone's innocence. He soon becomes obsessed with the case and a man named JJ Cord, who was there on the night of the murder.

1981's Cutter's Way has been relegated to the thrift store of cinema history and it's a damn shape. It's a classic Neo noir and the performance from John Heard should have been praised come award season. He plays the stereotypical drunk to perfection and brings a sadness to the role that makes it stand off. Of course Jeff Bridges is also fantastic because of course he is. He's Jeff Bridges.

This film is a solid little Neo noir. I'm not saying it will set the world on fire but it's worth a watch. Chariots of Fire won Best Picture in 1981 and I prefer this film to that boring meaningless film. Cutter's Way has a great mystery at it's heart and fantastic character work by two actors at the top of their game.

Internal politics at United Artists screwed up the film's release. The marketing was a joke and three negative reviews basically ask any hope the film had. As with a lot of films unfairly maligned at the time it has achieved redemption and some reevaluation. It now has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and is a cult hit. It's on Prime right now. Check it out.

Comments

Forgotten Film Friday: Absolute Power

Clint Eastwood stars as Luther Whitney, a jewel thief who works in the Washington DC area. One night while he is stealing from a mansion he is forced to hide in a secret compartment with a two way mirror. From there he observes a sexual rezendevous with the wife of a powerful man and the President of the United States Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman) Suddenly the president gets aggressive and while defending herself the woman is shot to death by two Secret Service agents. Luther manages to get away with a letter opener the woman stabbed the president with. At first Luther plans to flee the country. But when he is disgusted by a statement the president makes, Luther decides to expose the crime. I miss these kind of films. The nineties was a great time for thrillers exactly like this. They are not the flashiest films but they are also not obsessed with big action scenes. It's all plot and character with them. Sure this plot might be a little out there but Eastwood makes it work. He's...

John Candy month

What can you say about John Candy? He was a comic genius who was taken from us too soon. There were a lot of comedic heavyweights of the eighties and nineties but Candy stood above most of them. If there is a Mount Rushmore of comedy I imagine John Candy would be on it. For the month of July we are honoring this comic genius.

Oscar bait month

The Academy Awards. That time of the year when everyone debates what movies are truly the best and there is never a consensus and no one is ever happy. A movie can be incredibly popular and then it wins a bunch of Oscars and suddenly it's overrated and not very good or downright bad. It happens every year. But for the month of April let's take a look at those films that had Oscars on their mind and instead fell flat on their faces. Now Oscar Bait is a term that can also be applied to winners or films that did score a bunch of nominations. For example Bradley Cooper's film Maestro is very much an Oscar Bait movie even though it had a decent awards season. I want to talk about the films that did nothing. That were early contenders then either faded away eventually or just plain crashed and burned. Oscar Bait's biggest failures. What wrong here with these? Was the movie poor? Did something else just have a dominant run? Or were politics involved? Maybe all of the above. S...

Cinema Basement

Search This Blog