Orlando Bloom rebels against his Rather Handsome Gent image with The Cut (now streaming on Paramount+), in which he plays an aging boxer trying to lose far too much weight in far too little time in order to land a comeback bout. Of course you know Bloom as the big screen swashbuckler in The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean movies; more recently, we saw him stealing scenes playing a Method actor in goofy comedy Deep Cover, and we’re intrigued by the thought of him voicing a raccoon in a Peppa Pig special, so you can’t say the guy isn’t building a diverse filmography. Bloom works with director Sean Ellis (The Cursed, Anthropoid) and co-stars John Turturro and Caitriona Balfe, but the star has his work cut out for him trying to transcend a bevy of cliches.
THE CUT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: A decade ago, this boxer guy who remains unnamed throughout the movie but is dubbed the Wolf of Dublin so let’s just call him Wolf (Bloom) got his ass TKO’d. And that was it. Career kaput. But one truth about competitive athletes that this movie gets right is, the fire inside is almost impossible to quench. He struggles so much with being a nobody, the movie doesn’t even give him a name. He and his life partner-slash-trainer Caitlin (Balfe) run a boxing gym now, and when he isn’t teaching kids how to jab and parry – which he seems pretty good at – he’s unclogging the gym toilet and either taking the occasional selfie with a fan or taking shit from a-holes calling him washed up. On one wall of the gym is the requisite shrine to his past glory, an array of trophies and newspaper clippings functioning as an omnipresent reminder that he’s a palooka with no reason to exist anymore.
Of course we know this isn’t true. Wolf has worth, but you can’t tell him that. His troubles manifest in a binge-and-purge eating disorder that’s depicted in a disturbing, alarmingly detailed scene in which Bloom jams his fingers down his throat and hacks up bile. What comes next seems like salvation even though we know it absolutely isn’t – an offer from a showy promoter (Gary Beadle) to fly to Vegas for a high-profile championship bout. What’s good but is actually bad: It’s Wolf’s one last shot at redemption, or glory, or whatever. What’s bad and is still bad, in fact a bad sign: He’d be the last-minute replacement for a fighter who died. Bad juju all around, then. Terrible juju. Perhaps the worst juju. Of course, he says yes.
There’s a hitch, though. A deal with the devil, maybe. Wolf has to weigh in at 154 lbs. That’s an issue when you’re at 180 – 186 by the time you get off the flight. It’s an even bigger issue that he has to lose that weight in six days. Maybe he should just saw off an arm? (Yes, that’s a blatant Requiem for a Dream reference. Blatant, and apt.) Caitlin is concerned, and she shows a lot of that in this movie; it’s kinda her only thing to do, being concerned, as if we’re not already aware that everyone should be concerned. Wolf’s cut is slow going, so in comes Boz (Turturro), a deeply unscrupulous trainer who steps in and immediately knows what’s wrong here. “Your team – their problem is, they care about you too much,” Boz says. You know how training montages in boxing movies are supposed to pump you up with their rampant triumphalism? Well, the ones in this movie do the exact opposite. You’ve been warned!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Cut somewhat desperately wants to be Raging Bull or Rocky crossed with Requiem for a Dream.
Performance Worth Watching: Here’s the obligatory reference to how Bloom lost 35 lbs. to play this character; credit where it’s due, though, there’s no denying his commitment to the role, and Wolf’s dazed derangement is bleakly convincing.
Memorable Dialogue: Wolf’s mom, who turned tricks at military encampments while young Wolf waited in the car, imparts upon him terrible wisdom: “You get to be the one that hurts, or you get to be the one that makes other people hurt.”
Sex and Skin: Brief glimpses of Bloom’s tuckus.
Our Take: It’s not that The Cut is artless; it’s just derivative. And not even painfully derivative – it’s content with its mediocrity, its inability to go much deeper than the obvious notion that minds are strong and bodies are weak, and both are profoundly connected, and the destruction of the latter wreaks havoc on the former. So we get a lather-rinse-repeat cycle of scenes in which Caitlin is concerned (natch), Boz is sadistic and Wolf is driven by the simplistic trauma depicted in hokey flashbacks, the entire endeavor leavened with Wolf’s bleary, starved, sleep-deprived mania, which makes Vegas extra-uber-duber-VEGAS. When the production leaves the hotel room or training center. Which is rarely. It doesn’t even depict much boxing besides the opening scene, which is so choppily edited and unconvincing, you’ll be grateful not to endure any more amateurish depictions of pugilism.
The screenplay, by Justin Bull, pays lip service to the existence of addiction and disorders of the eating/psychological variety, but offers little beyond the obvious. Caitlin, who briefly references her own past struggle, says, “This hunger, it never leaves you. You have to learn to live with it,” and that’s the extent of the film’s insight. So perhaps the expectation is for Ellis to indulge gruesome depictions of Wolf’s drastic weight loss, and some of it is indeed disturbing – speed-freak sparring, literal bloodletting – but a lot of it is Bloom cloaked in black trashbags inside a sauna, or wrapped in towels trying to stay awake lest he slip into a coma. I think. What are some of the repercussions of such extreme dehydration and starvation, besides crazy and/or one-the-nose poignant hallucinations? Not sure. The film is intent on capturing disorienting vibes over detailed explorations of character, and how much extremity the human body and mind can endure. It’s a harrowing movie, just not a particularly good one.
Our Call: This Cut is so shallow, it doesn’t even need stitches. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.