At first glance, “The Cut” seems to be a standard-issue boxing film about a out-of-nowhere contender being given an unexpected shot at a big match—the kind of basic underdog sports drama that never seems to go out of style. However, anyone in the mood for such a thing who decides to go and see it may be more than a little startled to see that while it starts like a “Rocky” clone, it soon transforms into a film more focused on body horror than body blows with images so gruesome and grotesque that they make the typical violence associated with the sport seem like child’s play by comparison. That might sound interesting in theory, I suppose, but while the film may not go about its expected narrative path, it never quite manages to make itself into anything interesting or edifying and winds up wasting an undeniably committed performance from Orlando Bloom in the process.
He plays a boxer—one who remains unnamed throughout the film—who was once considered a promising super-welterweight fighter but in the match that opens up the story, he seems on the verge of victory when he becomes oddly distracted long enough to allow his opponent to retaliate and end both the bout and his career. When the story picks up ten years later, the former “Wolf of Dublin” is back in Ireland working at the gym owned by his partner/trainer Caitlin (Catriona Balfe), where he trains young kids in the sport and poses for pictures for those who still remember his glory days but also has to swamp out the toilets and deal with punk teens who write him off as nothing more than another has-been. He may seem content on the surface but he still has that hunger for success burning in him so when fight promoter Donny (Gary Beadle) arrives with an out-of-the-blue proposal—replace a recently deceased fighter for a highly publicized upcoming bout in Las Vegas in one week—the lure of the payday and, more importantly, the chance for redemption, has him leaping at the offer.
There is one big hitch, however. The maximum weight for a fighter in his class is 154 pounds, and he is currently clocking in at 186–while Donny can help fudge the initial weigh-in upon arriving in Vegas, this means that he has to somehow lose 32 pounds in the six days leading up to the fight in order to qualify. This is a task that seems virtually impossible to pull off but he is determined to make it into the ring and Caitlin and their team try to make it happen via relentless training and meals that hardly seem to measure up to the phrase “bare minimum.” Despite their efforts, the pounds are not coming off quickly enough , presumably because Caitlin cares about him too much to push him to the dangerous levels that are the only way that he can possibly make the weight at this point. Realizing this, Donny brings in a new trainer in Boz (John Turturro), a guy who makes it clear right from the start that he does not give a shit about him as a person and is only interested in getting the desired results by any means necessary, ranging from relentless workouts and sauna sessions to illegal drugs to attempting to drain every excess fluid—and I mean every—out of him, despite the obvious physical and mental toll that it is having on him.
Again, this is not your typical boxing narrative by any means—aside from the aforementioned flashback sequence, no bouts are actually seen at any point as the film essentially becomes a dark variation on the typical training montage sequence stretched out to feature-length. Instead, writer Justin Bull and director Sean Ellis (whose previous film was the period werewolf epic “The Cursed”) seem more interested in borrowing more than a few pages from the Darren Aronofsky playbook (ironically, just at a time when Aronofsky himself seems to have set it aside) to tell a story about someone pushing themselves to physical, mental and emotional extremes in pursuit of a seemingly impossible task and eventually cracking from the pressure. It is an intriguing approach, I suppose, but it does not make for an intriguing film due to the thinness of the screenplay. The central character and his basic story conflict are depicted in such shallow terms that it is impossible to work up much interest in them, even as the agonies grow more pronounced as the deadline looms. The relationship between him and Caitlin, which should have been the heart of the story, comes up disappointingly short while a series of increasingly tragic flashbacks to his childhood during the Troubles with his mother, presumably included to help explain his particular string of neuroses, are so embarrassingly clumsy and unnecessary that they could have all been dropped without losing a thing in the process.
It should be noted, however, that Bloom does commit to the bit with a fierce intensity and to whatever mild degree that “The Cut” does work from time to time is due almost entirely to his efforts. While the screenplay does none of the actors any favors (Turturro, though fitfully amusing, seems to be on autopilot most of the time while Balfe, even though she is essentially playing both the Adrian and Mickey parts in this narrative, has little of note to do), Bloom seems determined to prove that the notion of casting him in such a role is not the head-scratcher that it might seem at first. Indeed, he has shed the handsome lad persona he demonstrated in his various franchise film excursions for something darker, harder and more physically demanding and the results are pretty convincing. In his character’s drive to achieve greatness, he has clearly found a parallel to his own drive to being taken more seriously as an actor and, in terms of his performance, the results are undeniably compelling.
The same cannot be said for “The Cut” as a whole, however. This is a bleak nugget of a film that is trying so hard to take the typical sports movie narrative and unleash its darker and more nightmarish side that it runs out of steam long before arriving at its frustratingly oblique conclusion. Perhaps if it had taken a more streamlined approach that eliminated unnecessary material (such as the flashbacks) and found a way to demonstrate the central character’s physical and mental struggles other than merely plunging viewers into visceral ugliness, it might have made for a unique variation on a standard theme. Instead, we are left with a film that, despite a fairly arresting central performance, will leave most viewers ready to throw in the towel long before the end credits arrive.
