Engaging though this movie often is, it suffers from the choice-- either by actor John Heard or director Ivan Passer-- to keep the crippled Vietnam vet at full-tilt anger, his emotional volume perpetually cranked up to 11. John Heard manages to imbue Cutter with a ghostly kind of charm-- the suggestion of what he might have been if war hadn't destroyed him-- but one gets weary waiting for his next nihilistic act. He slaps his wife around, carries a gun, and weaponizes everything-- his car, his crutch, his language and his liquor.
We're supposed to forgive him, to see the lost soul, etc., but he wallows in self-pity, vitriol, and free-floating hostility. His friends tolerate him out of loyalty and guilt, but they're bored by it all, and so was I.
Finding the murderer of a 17-year-old girl is at the core of the plot, but the intensity of the search is almost entirely about the drama between a trio of 30ish friends: Cutter, Cutter's wife (Lisa Eichhorn), and their friend who witnessed the murder, Rich Bone (Jeff Bridges).
Released in 1981, "Cutter's Way" could serve as a requiem for the counterculture that was dismissed with the term "hippie" by a society that could not brook dissent, let alone socialist tendencies. The central trio are erudite and idealistic, qualities that earn them little but trouble. Their amateur attempts to prove that the local wealthy oiligarch (sic) is the murderer cost them dearly.
Speaking of cost, at no point is anything as mundane as income from jobs mentioned. Presumably, veteran disability payments keep Cutter and his wife in liquor and weed, and Rich Bone seems to be named after his parents' affluence, given his wardrobe, Ivy League education, and sleek sailboat.
The film is a disappointment, ultimately, in spite of the talent that went into it, including Eichhorn (who looks broken from first frame to last), Bridges (whose conscience just barely rules his hormones), and, in an impossibly burdensome role, Heard. Had Cutter been given more than one strident note to play-- had he pulled himself together over the worthy cause of solving a senseless and brutal murder-- "Cutter's Way" might have been great.
We're supposed to forgive him, to see the lost soul, etc., but he wallows in self-pity, vitriol, and free-floating hostility. His friends tolerate him out of loyalty and guilt, but they're bored by it all, and so was I.
Finding the murderer of a 17-year-old girl is at the core of the plot, but the intensity of the search is almost entirely about the drama between a trio of 30ish friends: Cutter, Cutter's wife (Lisa Eichhorn), and their friend who witnessed the murder, Rich Bone (Jeff Bridges).
Released in 1981, "Cutter's Way" could serve as a requiem for the counterculture that was dismissed with the term "hippie" by a society that could not brook dissent, let alone socialist tendencies. The central trio are erudite and idealistic, qualities that earn them little but trouble. Their amateur attempts to prove that the local wealthy oiligarch (sic) is the murderer cost them dearly.
Speaking of cost, at no point is anything as mundane as income from jobs mentioned. Presumably, veteran disability payments keep Cutter and his wife in liquor and weed, and Rich Bone seems to be named after his parents' affluence, given his wardrobe, Ivy League education, and sleek sailboat.
The film is a disappointment, ultimately, in spite of the talent that went into it, including Eichhorn (who looks broken from first frame to last), Bridges (whose conscience just barely rules his hormones), and, in an impossibly burdensome role, Heard. Had Cutter been given more than one strident note to play-- had he pulled himself together over the worthy cause of solving a senseless and brutal murder-- "Cutter's Way" might have been great.