Synopsis
Cutter does everything his way. Fighting. Loving. Working. Tracking down a killer.
Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.
Cutter's Way
1981 Directed by Ivan Passer
Cast
Jeff Bridges John Heard Lisa Eichhorn Ann Dusenberry Stephen Elliott Arthur Rosenberg Nina van Pallandt Patricia Donahue Geraldine Baron Katherine Pass Francis X. McCarthy George Planco Jay Fletcher George Dickerson Jack Murdock Essex Smith Rod Gist Leonard Lightfoot Julia Duffy Randall Hicks Roy Hollis Billy Drago Caesar Cordova Jonathan Terry William Pelt Ron Marcroft Ted White Tony Epper Andy Epper Show All…
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Alternative Titles
A la manera d'en Cutter, Med blod skal ondt fordrives, Alla maniera di Cutter, El camino de Cutter, La blessure, Cutter V'Bon, Cutterin kosto, Cutter and Bone, Bis zum bitteren Ende, Caso de Assassinato, Sposób Cuttera
Genres
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Thrillers and murder mysteries Politics and human rights film noir, femme fatale, 1940s, thriller or intriguing cops, murder, thriller, detective or crime political, president, historical, politician or democracy drugs, violence, crime, gritty or cops spy, agent, intrigue, thriller or suspense Show All…
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”He’s responsible. Him and all the motherfuckers like him. They’re all the same. You know why they’re all the same? Because it’s never their ass that’s on the line. It’s always somebody else’s. Always yours, mine, ours.”
It feels almost trite to say this is a perfect specimen of post-Vietnam alienation and post-Watergate alienation. It speaks to both of those, yes, but it also speaks to a sense of exhaustion, of living without the hope of a future, of knowing that there’s something better and also knowing you’ll never touch it. There’s Cutter, chewed up by the war. Bone, aimless and resigned to a life without meaning. And Mo (played by a revelatory Lisa Eichhorn) trapped in domestic purgatory, unable… -
CUTTER'S WAY opens on the American Dream in the form of a melting pot parade, the procession playing out in slow motion with Jack Nitzche's otherworldly zither and glass harmonica lullaby underlining the word "dream." Later when the three main characters are watching a similar procession, Cutter makes some characteristically offensive, cynical remarks about floats featuring Native Americans and Mexicans. "Look at our glorious past...happy padres, happy Indians. Wiped out in less than 200 years by disease and forced labor. You can still get one to clean your kitchen... they died with Christ's blessing. Happy corpses, each and every one." Maybe Cutter, disfigured physically and mentally in America's most recent imperialist adventure, is getting to the root of it all:…
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90
Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn are a triple-threat in this melancholic and weary neo-noir. No longer is it a revelation that our American institutions failed us - we acknowledge them as the enemy - but what is there to do about it? This gnaws at the harrowing reality of our own apathy. It's fitting that Jordan Cronenweth's (DP on Blade Runner and Stop Making Sense) look for this film is barely in color, because it feels like a transitional film into ambiguity, distanced from the black and white ways that we discuss our collective sorrow and trauma. Gorgeous and unsettling.
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Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way became an instant favorite as soon as it was over. Great piece of post-Vietnam Reagan era paranoia and an existential, cynical & moody Santa Barbara sun-splashed neo-noir. I love the feeling that this film captures something wistful & melancholic about how we try to make sense of the world and the disassociation that comes with being directionless. John Heard gives the performance of a lifetime, the way he portrays anger & underlying paranoia is just brilliant. Lisa Eichhorn is a revelation, she does so much with a relatively small screen time. Jeff Bridges gives one of his best performances. All three leads have great chemistry together and richly defined characters. Just before shooting BLADE RUNNER, Jordan Cronenweth shot this film and the great Jack Nitzsche did the score.
It features one of the best cut to end credits ever. -
In “Cutter’s Way,” green is always just a little bit on the other side of the fence.
It’s seen through doorways, and beyond windowpanes. Seen, but, asunobtainable as the sun; which burns everything and everyone else into a tan shade of faded worn.
Director Ivan Passers “Cutter’s” stars Jeff Bridges and John Heard, respectively, as a burnout and a war veteran investigating the disappearance of a young woman.
If you’ve heard this one before, well, there’s something to be said about how it might have influenced the odyssey of a certain Dude about fifteen years later.
“Cutter’s,” fitting for a film whose reluctant protagonist avers, “Nothing matters,” arrived on the scene too late to disrupt like “Easy Rider,” too early…
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"Give the man his goddamn doll."
This is a thriller in the same way Moby-Dick is an adventure tale, on paper about a team of heroes taking on a dastardly villain but in its substance and its details a story about hopeless tragedy and the differing responses people have to it. I've never been more shocked to find out a movie wasn't made in the 70s.
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John Heard gives maybe the greatest going-for-it performance of the 80s. I love this movie and its jet-black heart.
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An absolute gem of an L.A. noir, built around the relationship between a self-destructive Vietnam vet (John Heard) and a friend (Jeff Bridges) who knows him well enough to forgive his perpetual sins, even when they put them both in mortal danger. Very much a proto-Big Lebowski, too, given the setting, the amateur sleuthing , and buddy pairing of Bridges and a vet. The ending is an all-timer.
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Cinematic Time Capsule
1981 Marathon - Film #18“Your license is expired.”
“The car runs fine without one.”Jeff Bridges stars as an unambitious social floater who suddenly finds himself at the center of a crime mystery involving a rich powerful patriarch of the community.
His best friend is a gun-toting, loud-mouthed veteran who suspects that it’s all part of a huge conspiracy and keeps trying to get Bridges to entrap the rich guy.
What’s really crazy, is that even at the Old Spanish Town Fiesta not a single person calls him El Duderino?!?!
BONUS POINTS to John Heard who knocks it out of the park as the rambunctious drunkard with a bruised heart.
”He’s not your average one-eyed cripple”
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This was a film I couldn't fully connect with. I think that might be down to the fact that all of the main characters are so damn unlikable. Lisa Eichhorn as Mo is the most sympathetic, but she has a lot less screen time than John Heard and Jeff Bridges. All three do sterling work here, can't fault the acting at all - John Heard plays somewhat against type as the eponymous Cutter and fully immerses himself in the role, playing the irascible, coiled spring of a disenfranchised 'nam vet perfectly. The guy's just an asshole. As is Jeff Bridges's Bone, in a different way - a selfish, shallow drifter; a self-regarding poseur, seemingly incapable of taking responsibility for his…
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All We Want To Do Is Come Home: The Springtime In Vietnam Project
Cutter's Way is one of the few films ever made that made me angry.
To be more precise, it didn't actually make me angry itself. It's more the fact that it continues to be almost completely ignored for the many things it is over 35 years now since its release. There's a style and method to almost everything surrounding this film that I find fascinating. From its 'do not even mention its name' treatment of the post-Vietnam War backdrop it's set against to its off-centre performances and characters through to its strange almost feather-light plot.
Films like this intrigue me no end, especially when they come from…
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The last American hero. A melancholy, boozy beachside noir that lives in the shadow of Vietnam and treats its central mystery like an afterthought. Instead, it's all about commitment and purpose; a crippled war vet and his flighty floozy of an Ivy League burnout pal coming to terms with the fact that they self-actualized people they hate without even realizing it along the way. Arcs are certainly achieved, but also culminate in the bleakest final shot in all of cinema. A stunning work out of time. [35mm]
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