Review of Cutter's Way (1981) by Alexander W — 11 Apr 2014

Cutters Way is a really interesting, curious film noir thriller, it's almost unconcerned with things like narrative, plot or even the murder mystery at it's centre, it's more about the characters, mood, atmosphere and dialogue it feels loose and ragged, it moves at it's own pace, sometimes your not even sure were it's actually going, which can be both exciting and frustrating, it's not meandering but it sometimes feels like it.

What this film is really about is the two men at the centre of the story, Jeff Bridges (looking stunningly young and handsome) as Richard Bone, a womanising drifter so uncomitted to anything in his life or others, that the murder mystery he's in the middle of even seems like a thing of little concern to him, and then theres John Heard as title character Alex Cutter, the actor is known to pretty much everyone as Kevin Mccallister's dad Peter from the Home Alone films, this is a shame because he is absolutely spectacular in this film, if Heard only could have at least given us another half dozen performance's of this searing, magnetic intensity, he would have been one of the greatest actors of all time, because this is one of the greatest performances and one of the most complex and compelling characters i've ever seen in a film, he's that damn good, truly a wasted actor.

The other big drive of this film is it's complete ambiguity, theres a good chance that the real killer may have walked right out of this films story after he dumps the body at the beginning, theres a feeling that this is all a mistake.

The ending especially will haunt you for a long time, questioning over and over what really happened. Great, underrated, uncompromising and intelligent grown up film making.