When I finally saw Cutter\u2019s Way<\/em> last year, I felt like a schmuck, because it so clearly should\u2019ve been in that book \u2013 even with a 1981 release date, since it\u2019s full of the same \u201clast movie of the \u201870s\u201d energy as contemporaneous films like Raging Bull<\/em>, Cruising, <\/em>and Dressed to Kill<\/em>. But more importantly, it\u2019s clearly of the same spirit as those \u201870s P.I. movies, like Night Moves <\/em>and Hickey and Boggs<\/em> and The Long Goodbye<\/em>; in fact, when viewers draw the line (and many do) from The Long Goodbye<\/em> to The Big Lebowski<\/em>, Cutter\u2019s Way<\/em> is an essential, direct link between the two films \u2013 featuring, as it does, both the former\u2019s Nina van Pallandt and the latter\u2019s Jeff Bridges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He stars as Richard Bone, who we first meet on a run of bad luck \u2013 leaving a misfire of a sexual encounter with a married woman, his car breaks down in the middle of a rainstorm, prompting one of the films most relatable moments: this grown man, yelling to no one in particular, \u201cF*CK YOU TOO!\u201d In the midst of this mess, he sees another car pull into the alley, and a man throwing something into a trash can. The next morning, he discovers that \u201csomething\u201d was the body of a young woman, and his abandoned car has made him a suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a lengthy interrogation, the police release him. He heads to the Santa Barbara \u201cFounder\u2019s Day Parade,\u201d with his buddy Alex Cutter (John Heard); they plan to watch, mostly ironically, while beginning the day\u2019s drinking (if the previous day\u2019s even ended). But on one of the floats, he recognizes the man from the alley \u2013 though when he discovers it\u2019s a powerful local businessman named J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliot), he thinks maybe he didn\u2019t see him after all. Cutter, immediately obsessed with taking down The Man, tries to interrogate his pal, with little success \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been doin\u2019 this all night long with professionals, Alex!\u201d But Cutter won\u2019t be stymied, becoming an amateur sleuth, and later (with the help of the victim\u2019s sister), an amateur blackmailer. Bone indulges him, but only to a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most jarring elements of the picture, for the contemporary viewer, is the seemingly incongruous casting; in his later years, Bridges\u2019s work has hewed much closer to the kind of operatic eccentrics that Heard here plays so well, while Heard would play much more straight-forward (almost straight-man) types. But the against (subsequent) type casting works to the film\u2019s advantage; nothing you\u2019ve seen Heard do will prepare you for what he\u2019s up to here, as a roaring, drunken Vietnam vet with a missing arm, bum leg, and eye patch. He is, for much of the film, abrasive and unsympathetic; at various points, he\u2019ll slap his girlfriend (\u201cYou think this is the first time?\u201d she growls after), drop the n-bomb, endanger those he cares about, and generally act like a jerk. Early on, as Bone exits their regular watering hole, Cutter throws his cane and busts the bar\u2019s neon beer sign; the off-camera barkeep\u2019s weary \u201cThat\u2019s goin\u2019 on your tab, Cutter\u201d gives us more information about this character than a full novel could. (In another memorable meltdown, he smashes up a phone booth and beats the hell out of a stuffed animal before pumping several bullets into the poor carnival prize.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bone will try to make excuses for his friend (\u201cThe war, you know\u2026\u201d), but he doesn\u2019t make much of an effort; Bone doesn\u2019t make much of an effort at anything. He seems to have coasted, for most of his life, on his astonishing good looks, but we get the feeling that the tank is running dry; in his very first scene, van Pallandt doesn\u2019t exactly praise his sexual performance, and the best he can muster up on his way out the door is a weak, \u201cWell, it\u2019s been better for me too.\u201d This handsome, empty stud is a good fit for Bridges, who was entering a rich period of playing golden boys who\u2019ve lost their lustre (The Fabulous Baker Boys<\/em>, at the decade\u2019s end, was perhaps the apex of this run) – he looks put together, but he\u2019s completely broken. Their pal George (Arthur Rosenberg), the responsible member of their peer group, tells him things like \u201cI think in the end you\u2019re gonna tire of all this drifting\u201d and \u201cSooner or later, you\u2019re gonna have to make a decision about something,\u201d and it feels like you can watch the spirit of the \u201870s curdling into the \u201880s, the kind of thinking that got boomers settling into real jobs and turning into yuppies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The buddy dynamics between Cutter and Bone are, to put it mildly, complicated; these are two guys who\u2019ve heard each other\u2019s nonsense often enough to call it out (\u201cWhen you were getting\u2019 laid in the Ivy League, I was getting\u2019 my ass shot off\u201d), and often, they\u2019re both right. Their allegiances and cast-offs are as fleeting as the wind, and when Bone and Cutter\u2019s wife Mo (Lisa Eichhhorn), who have been circling each other for the entire movie, finally give in, it\u2019s barely over before the waves of regret hit. In a movie filled with quietly devastating moments, none lands harder than Bone quietly sneaking out afterwards \u2013 and her eyes opening immediately after he does, indicating that she was waiting for him to leave anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those tiny flashes of human observation were the stock-in-trade of Ivan Passer, a key member of the Czech New Wave (the film opens with a beautiful outsider\u2019s tableaux, as composer Jack Nitzche\u2019s music, strange and discordant, plays over slow-mo images of that most Americana of events, the holiday parade). He worked in a loose, shaggy style, and like his 1971 masterpiece Born to Win<\/em>, this is a burn-out hang-out movie. The drug of choice was heroin in that film, booze in this one, and his sense of lived-in atmosphere is so secure that we get the feeling, in the hung-over opening scenes, that this is how a lot of their nights (and mornings) play out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, of course, Cutter and Bone must confront their Big Bad, and they bluff their way into a swanky event at his home to take him down. We\u2019re ready, thanks to the movies, to watch them make a scene, humiliate the bad guy, and see to it that justice is done. But that\u2019s only what happens in movies. When Bone is finally face to face with Cord, he\u2019s met with the icy gravitas of real power \u2013 he doesn\u2019t raise his voice, and doesn\u2019t have to. This is the kind of tycoon that would run roughshod over the 1980s, and knock people like Cutter and Bone out of the way without hesitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that was all to come. Cutter\u2019s Way<\/em> was the victim of a notoriously botched release; United Artists, then falling apart thanks to the boondoggle of Heaven\u2019s Gate, <\/em>barely promoted it at all and pulled it from theaters after only a week (under its original title, and the title of the Newton Thornburg novel it was based on, Cutter and Bone<\/em>). The studio attempted to remarket it as a specialty release, along with some film festival playdates, but in spite of critical raves, audiences stayed away. It\u2019s not hard to guess why; like Jake LaMotta in the studio\u2019s Raging Bull<\/em>, a character a key UA exec deemed \u201ca cockroach,\u201d the film\u2019s protagonists are often unsympathetic, which wasn\u2019t an obstruction through most of the 1970s. But this was now a marketplace made by the likes of Rocky <\/em>and Star Wars<\/em>, and what people wanted out of popular cinema had shifted. After the feel-bad cinema of the \u201870s, audiences went to the movies to see what they could<\/em> be. Bummer movies like Cutter\u2019s Way <\/em>showed them who they were afraid they were. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cutters4-1024x576.jpg\")
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