Cutter's Way

When Richard Bone, a boat salesman and gigolo in Santa Barbara, is declared a suspect in the murder of a teenage girl, he asks his best friend, Alex Cutter, a handicapped Vietnam veteran, for help. Only his friend, in the search for the actual murderer, finds the goal that was missing from his life, his zeal putting them in danger. One of the pioneer directors of the Czech New Wave living in self-exile, Ivan Passer gave us an unbearably melancholic buddy movie about the end of an entire era. Although it premiered in 1981, “Cutter’s Way” seems like it belongs next to those legendary marginal films of the 70s; only it was born in the wrong year, when the US was seeking oblivion of the catastrophic mistakes that go back decades. Thirty years later, this lost masterpiece of the American cinema comes back to life, a living proof that justice is a chimera, as fleeting as the redemption from the traumas of the past.

Director: Ivan Passer

Screenwriter: Jeffrey Alan Fiskin Newton Thornburg

DoP: Jordan Cronenweth

Music: Jack Nitzsche

Editor: Caroline Biggerstaff

Principal Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn, Ann Dusenberry, Stephen Elliott, Arthur Rosenberg

Country: USA

Year: 1981

Running Time: 105'

Language: English