Cutter's Way - Radiance 4K

Cutter’s Way (out now on 4K from Radiance) is one I’ve seen referenced here and there over the years and always meant to watch but never did for whatever reason. Now that it’s out on 4K, I had a chance to finally rectify that, and I’m glad I did. This is one of those older movies that opens my eyes for other films I love because it was clearly an inspiration for other filmmakers. But what puts it on another level is how deceptively simple the story is in a way that makes it compelling on its own and depressingly relevant decades later.

But let me get the most obvious topic out of the way, first. John Heard is great in this, and anyone who only knows him as the Home Alone dad or even the corrupt cop in The Sopranos needs to watch this. At first glance, he retroactively looks like a caricature of a disgruntled Vietnam vet. He’s got the shaggy hair, beard, eye-patch, missing limb, and he’s sick of this shit! Thanks to countless other portrayals, like Gary Sinise’s Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump, it would be easy to dismiss Cutter at first glance. But Heard makes the character feel real, even if he amps it up to an extreme degree multiple times. There’s real pain in his eye, and he makes you understand his righteous anger with the world. Jeff Bridges and Lisa Eichhorn are great, as well, but this is Heard’s movie. 

Heard’s performance alone makes this worth watching, but its relevance stuck with me more than anything. Take out the 1970s of it all and Cutter’s rants still work. Capitalism has ruined a lot of things in this country, and justice is arguably the most important loss. Rich people seem to get away with everything, even murder, while the lowly regular people suffer, and there’s not much that can be done about it. Even when something drastic is done, it doesn’t change anything, and usually just leads to more suffering. We’re left with two choices: be like Cutter and let it consume you, or walk away like Bone (though even Bone can’t take it anymore in the end). Cutter’s monologue (though focused on Vietnam it can apply to any war or injustice) explains it so well in so few lines: “I watched the war on TV like everybody else. Thought the same damn things. You know what you thought when saw a picture of a young woman with a baby lying face down in a ditch, two gooks. You had three reactions, Rich, same as everybody else. The first one was real easy: ‘I hate the United States of America.’ Yeah. You see the same damn thing the next day, and you move up a notch. ‘There is no God.’ But you know what you finally say, what everybody finally says, no matter what? ‘I’m hungry.’”

Beyond that, this movie reminded me of two other films (though there are plenty of others to compare it to, I’m sure): Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski. I connect this to Inherent Vice largely for the tone, but also for the slight ambiguity. The eerie score, while quite different from Vice’s, sets an apocalyptic tone signifying the end of an era or America or the idea of it anyway. And while there is a specific man they’re after in Cutter’s Way as opposed to the mostly faceless evil cabal of Inherent Vice, it’s still the same. We’re not sure if Cord has actually committed murder, but it doesn’t even matter. Anyone with that much money and power must have blood on his hands. Both films show the miserable conflict of knowing things are terrible, but also knowing there’s nothing that can be done beyond getting yourself killed on principle. 

The Big Lebowski is the more obvious, if tonally different, comparison. Of course, there’s Bridges; in both films he’s a reluctant participant in his Vietnam vet friend’s conspiracy quests. In many ways, I find Lebowski to simply be the light-hearted comedic version of this story. The world’s fucked, but fuck it, let’s go bowling. It’s as if the Coens watched this movie and took Cutter and Bone and found the most extreme comedic versions of both. In Bone, the go with the flow quasi-gigolo became the constantly stoned Dude, who just wants to be left alone. In Cutter, the darker elements have been stripped away leaving only the goofy diatribes that somehow connect Vietnam to everything. It’s not a one to one, and I don’t actually think the Coens were trying to make a version of this (from the title alone, they were more clearly going for a neo-noir comedy), but it’s impossible not to think of The Big Lebowski while watching Cutter’s Way and vice versa.

It may have taken me way too long to get around to watching Cutter’s Way, but it hit hard once I finally watched. I actually watched it twice within a couple days. This film stuck with me, and I’ll be thinking about it for a while. And thanks to Radiance’s new 4K, I’ll have a great version to check out when I inevitably revisit it after rewatching The Big Lebowski. 

Special Features and Transfer

This is the kind of movie 4K was meant for. Of course new movies will look great; they already look great on blu-ray. But when a film from decades ago gets the treatment, it adds another layer to enjoy, and this one looks great. 

As for the special features, Radiance is up there with all the other boutique labels. The artwork and case is high quality. And there’s a book included with essays and whatnot. 

There is just one new featurette with three writers (George Pelecanos, Megan Abbott, and Jordan Harper) mainly talking about the source novel and its author, Newton Thornburg. It was decent, and it gave me a few books to add to my ever-growing read list.

Everything else is archival, but what’s great about Radiance is that they go through all the other previous editions and bring all the features together on one release. So you get all the commentaries, featurettes, and interviews from past editions. I only checked out the interviews, and they each offered interesting insights into the making of the film.