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:…

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…

I expected a standard Hollywood action picture, so for the first 20 minutes or so I was thrown for a loop. I wasn't too fond of any of the characters, especially Cutter, and I was getting impatient to get to the story. But then something happened. None of the relationships in the film were clearly demarcated. None of the dialogue was typical. I knew it was based on a book, but until that moment I had no idea that this was more of a literary picture, a play of sorts, than a Hollywood action film. I loved the film from that moment on.

I liked Jeff Bridges' Richard Bones, the quiet philanderer who was in love with Mo (or at…

I didn’t dislike Cutter’s Way, I hated it .. loathed it.

Why? Because I saw what could possibly be a brilliant book ( which I haven’t read ), with brilliantly complex characters and relationships, handled on the screen in such an inept way.

Was it the performances? Generally no. John Heard was great as the titular Cutter, Jeff Bridges was fine as Jeff Bridges, and Lisa Eichhorn had her moments. Ann Dusenberry as Valerie Duran was 1980’s hollow. I was convinced that she saw Nancy Allen in Dressed to Kill and thought, wow, that’s acting! Wow, that’s a look!

It was how the screenplay handled these complex characters, or rather totally failed to handle them, that put me over the…

“I watched the war on TV like everybody else. Thought the same damn things. You know what you thought when you saw a picture of a young woman with a baby lying face down in a ditch, two gooks. You had three reactions, Rich, same as everybody else. The first one was real easy: ‘I hate the United States of America’. Yeah. You see the same damn thing the next day and you move up a notch. ‘There is no God’. But you know what you finally say, what everybody finally says, no matter what? ‘I’m hungry’” Alex Cutter.

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen are wonderful filmmakers who have respect from all film fans for the numerous great works. However,…

I first saw Cutter's Way about four years ago (pre-Letterboxd) and needless to say, it basically went over my head for it wasn't the film that I had hoped it would be. What a close-minded fool I was back then. With four years of memory decay I was able to watch the film with fresh eyes and was blown away by the reserved depiction of loss. Loss in one's dignity, loss in one's stability, loss in the American Dream, loss in brotherhood, loss in marriage and the lingering loss of the past and the inability to fix it. These mournful themes are beautifully conveyed through the narrative catalyst of an unsolved murder that may have been witnessed by the protagonist,…

There has been millions of movies made in the past 100 years that films have been around, I would say only 30% will be remembered as good movies. However there are movies out there that have been forgotten which is a shame because just because a movie isn’t lets say as good as (I am spit balling here) There There Be Blood it doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie.

Cutter’s Way is a movie I found out about by reading a top 50 movies you probably haven’t seen but should list, so I decided to watch it and found myself enjoying the film. Not extremely but of much of the movies I have watched on this list as well as…

Home Alone will never be the same again.

John Heard's best performance. And I feel confident saying that even if it's the only other performance I've seen of his outside of Home Alone.

He's just so good. Obviously crazy, but as the film goes on, you start to sympathize with him, playing the Bone role, hoping he'll figure out whatever he's doing and get...better?

Reminded me a lot of Inherent Vice, Big Lebowski, all that stuff. There's way more to this than the 'eccentric character getting involved in overly complicated mystery' stuff, though.

A lot of these sorts of films tend to dwell on things and pad out their run time with humour or exposition. The pacing in this is…