La blessure

This is an excellent movie and one of the most consistently underrated. John Heard has never been better, and he is (alongside the late J.T. Walsh) amongst the most under-appreciated actors ever (one of the few mistakes in 'The Sopranos' was to let him go). However, Jeff Bridges yet again proves his credentials by turning in a beautifully nuanced performance as an unattractive, self-absorbed failed playboy in counterpoint to Heard's righteous crippled Vietnam veteran.

This is a companion piece to 'Chinatown' in its study of corrupt power structures, but is more intimate and believable (and 'Chinatown' is superb). We still wait for its recent equal in the noir stakes.

Alex Cutter (John Heard) is a drunken disabled war veteran. His wife Mo (Lisa Eichorn) is also a drunken mess. Their best friend Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is a witness to a murder, and he thinks that the killer is this powerful oil tycoon JJ Cord (Stephen Elliott). Cutter refuses to let it go, and together with the victim's sister Valerie Duran (Ann Dusenberry) harasses Bone to get JJ.

The main drawback is that their plan was never going to work. If they really thought about it, they would see it as a fool's errand. The plan actually insulates JJ from any testimony from Bone. The plan actually helps JJ.

However we know Cutter is a drunk bastard. So I'm willing to believe that he would come up with a poorly constructed plan. It's the acting that is so superior in this. John Heard really goes all out, and Jeff Bridges' calmness makes them the perfect duo. I just love how crazy John Heard gets. He really shines.

A friend of mine gave me the novel Cutter and Bone (AKA Cutter's Way) was based on, so that immediately creates a problem, comparing two different art forms.

Forget the novel (by the obscure Newton Thornburg) for this purpose only. The movie is a moving meditation on power, desperation, and paranoia. It is also a great love story.

I always end up writing "...you've read the other comments so you know what this is about" but Cutter and Bone is so many things, it cannot be pinned down easily.

As noted in the favorable reviews here, this is chock full of great film acting that moves the story along as well as making come alive. Who was the clueless shmoe who said "nothing happens"? What movie was he watching?

Adrift in post-Vietnam America, Cutter finally finds something in life that has meaning; the murder of a young hitchhiker.

But any meaning is too much for the damaged Cutter who becomes relentless in the pursuit of a possible killer who also is of the wealthy, powerful elite that sent OPS (other people's sons) to Vietnam. Cutter finally has a genuine target ("he's not anyone Rich, he's RESPONSIBLE" says Cutter to Richard Bone in a great line delivery by John Heard) for his unfocused righteous anger.

Bone tries to sabotage the investigation but ends up buying in at the very end. Why? He has the rage also, as did many Americans who weren't politically active, did not serve in Vietnam. It's a rage that infected a nation with guilt, self-doubt, and eventually, a new hubris, a kind of "never again" attitude toward "less developed" nations that has us yet again on the brink of yet another war in a series of wars that seem to never end and we hardly even notice anymore (remember Grenada? Bombing Tripoli and Benghazi? proxy armies in Nicaragua and El Salvador, etc.?)

The other part of Cutter and Bone is a love triangle and a very well explicated one at that. Cutter and Bone both love Mo who can't love herself. Bone is not as shallow as he appears and it scares him. Cutter is too damaged and angry to love her enough until she is gone.

I've known these people in one way or another, and that is why this movie has always meant so much to me. It is also about a great country I used to live in that began to disappear about the time this movie is set, and has since metamorphosed into a large wounded, angry monster, bereft of the tears for near-paradise lost that this excellent movie depicts.

Ostensibly this film appears to be a buddy movie from the 1980s, but it is actually something much more interesting. Employing standard Hollywood clinches with its thriller/ investigation narrative and many of of its "stock" characters and situations, the little guys - Heard and Bridges - take on Mr Fat Cat Capitalist who rules the peacetime world like an untouchable and corrupt monarch. The film, though well-executed and enjoyable, at first seems no more than a well-scripted, well-acted (Heard is particularly good as the embittered, crippled Vietnam Veteran) genre piece. However, what emerges by the end is something far more exciting and radical - an indictment of US politics and power relations, and a genuinely bleak reflection on the impossibility and rarity of real justice both at the micro and macro levels.

Vietnam and its true significance is used to great effect in the film, as is the interplay between the two buddies. Whilst Bridges won't accept that he has witnessed the ultimate, bleak truth of US power relations until the film's abrupt, punchy end, Heard knows the truth intuitively and automatically because he understands and hates the world from the the start. He has given up on notions such as forgiveness and even the need for legal process, and seeks only revenge on the rich and the powerful. He understands, correctly, that is the only way a kind of momentary justice is possible, since everything else is either controlled by the elites or made to protect them. Without wishing to spoil the film's brilliant final moments, it is here that the whodunnit story is stripped away and the guilt they have been seeking to prove, as Richard Bone realises, becomes entirely political or metaphysical, and the the crime itself becomes irrelevant.

Cutter's Way is one of my most favorite films. The characterization is excellent, the plot is both persuasive and surprising, and the acting is flawless--Lisa Eichhorn, whom I'd never heard of before, in particular. It's a travesty that virtually no one has heard of this film; all I can say is that it is well worth watching, if you can find it at your video store or watch it on late-night TV....