Review of Cutter's Way (1981) by Brian R — 07 Jan 2009

An excellent, slow-burning, occasionally noirish thriller. Jeff Bridges plays Richard Bone, a yacht salesman/gigolo who accidentally witnesses the disposal of a murdered girl's body after his car breaks down in a rainstorm. When Bone thinks he recognises a wealthy local oil tycoon as the man he saw through the rain that night, his friend Alex Cutter (John Heard), a bitter, alcoholic Vietnam veteran, awakens from his apathetic torpor and embarks on an obsessive quest to bring the 'killer' to justice.

From the outset Cutter is established as a landlocked, modern day Ahab - indeed, his very first words are a reference to Moby Dick - hunting not so much for the one that got away as for the one that gets away with it: the untouchable, over-privileged leviathan of big business; exactly the kind of guy who stayed home in his well-insulated ivory tower while Cutter was being relieved of an eye, an arm and a leg in Southeast Asia. It's a fascinating idea and, if anything, the script could have done more with it. No matter, because what makes the movie really special is the wonderful love triangle between Heard, Bridges and Lisa Eichhorn, who plays Cutter's wife, Mo. It will give you some idea of how great Eichhorn is in this movie if I say she wipes the floor with Heard and Bridges, both of whom are at least as good here as they've been in anything else; she breaks my heart every time and should have picked up every award going.