Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

philosopherjack Viewed today, Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way seems even more clearly an expression of America's divisions and fractures: sleek images of privilege clash with outbursts of paranoia, dark fantasy and instability - the film's evasive mastery lies in the frequent difficulty of determining the dividing lines. Jeff Bridges' Richard Bone witnesses the late-night dumping of a murdered woman, and thinks the murderer may be a wealthy oil mogul; his friend Alex Cutter hatches a plan to tease out a confession by threatening blackmail; Cutter's wife Mo (Lisa Eichhorn) keeps much of her thoughts and her sadness to herself behind a fixed but fragile smile. John Heard's Cutter is a singular creation - an eye, arm and leg lost in Vietnam, he seems initially like a wildly provocative, undisciplined drunk, but it becomes clear that there's some methodical artifice to this madness, even if the only rational outcome of it is self-obliteration. The film hints at past entanglements, crimes and lost possibilities, suggesting that the outrage of Vietnam was only the most visible manifestation of the mess at home. And the outstanding ending delivers an emblematic charging toward justice on a white horse, foretold early in the film, but accompanied by pervasive confusion of a precisely plotted kind only achievable through immaculate creative clarity. When the mogul is finally directly confronted, there's a direct line from his chilling response - "What if I did?" - to (say) assertions about one's ability to stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and kill someone without losing voters; the stage is larger, but the challenge to stability and morality (or what's still intact of both) is the same. The main difference, beyond even what the film foresaw, is that our own rampaging mogul would hijack so much of Cutter's self-justifying paranoia, without any of its moral purpose.

Mr-Fusion The brilliance of "Cutter's Way" is that it keeps you thinking about the witnessed crime in the film's opening, but it's really about the three main characters; individuals so adrift and hurting that you just hope for some kind of catharsis for these people. John Heard and Lisa Eichhorn really shine because of this, although Jeff Bridges is no lightweight. This is a crime/character drama that I couldn't peel away from. You get the unshakable feeling that everything about the picture Heard's character has painted for us is wrong, and that we're heading for a very tragic ending. But it speaks to the narrative's strength that I had to find out, one way or the other. And it is most certainly a sad end (ambiguities and all), which continues to haunt after the credits finished rolling. Outstanding movie.8.5/10

chaos-rampant How many movies can you name where a very grizzly Ahabian figure, peg leg eye patch and all, prowls the seemy backalleys and streets of Los Angeles trying to pin a gruesome murder to a powerful oil baron? The movie starts with very direct Moby-Dick references, Cutter, the one-legged veteran back from Vietnam with scars to last him a lifetime, refers to Bone as Ishmael and the small bar they meet is called The Encantado, before it segues into a pattern of various 70's crime/noirish diversions to very basic human questions, life and death, pain and loss. Cutter is convinced the oil baron is the man they're looking for, the wealthy upper-class who is above justice and above reproach, yet the movie proves mercifully ambiguous, wonderfully 70's in that aspect.Cutter and Bone never know for sure and neither do we, but at some point it stops to really matter. The movie is not really a whodunit not because we never discover who done it but because we don't care, the movie doesn't care, because at some point Cutter and Bone, lower-class thirtysomethings with broken lives, nowhere to go, and their friendship permanently shattered by something that involved Bone and Cutter's wife, barge into JJ Cord's mansion uninvited, and somehow, in a strange quiet almost surreal way, one-legged Cutter is suddenly riding a white horse through the gardens in a frenzy, stomping party guests and upturning tables in his furious path, like he's back in the Vietnam jungle and running not away from something like enemy soldiers will run from enemy fire but towards it in a final mad dash, and out of the bushes and trees of JJ Cord's mansion emerges Cutter's Way, the movie now pure sublime and primeval, going out in a final upflare of stubborn and dying revenge.Cutter confronts JJ Cord and when he puts on his mirror shades, we understand that we're looking at the personification of Uncle Sam, so that he may not be guilty for that one girl's murder but he's guilty for something, and more, that Cutter is there to strike not at the mysterious old man, but through him, to strike "...all that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick [...] and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him". Perfect. Even Apocalypse Now didn't transfigure the enigma that lies in the heart of its literary source in a way quite as faithful simple and effective.The powerful thematic content and the subtle-but-not-so-subtle way Ivan Passer handles it is one thing Cutter's Way does right. The movie is fierce gritty and stubborn, like its halfmad protagonist striking in fits of rage the air with his cane and shooting holes in the sea, but it's also quiet bittersweet and tender and takes its time to get where it needs to. I like how the crime mystery slowly fades and dissolves in the haze of the hot summer Los Angeles afternoon before it's allowed to become tedious or an end in itself and instead we get to spend time out in the pier or inside cramped living rooms with the heavy curtains pulled, there are empty whiskey bottles on the floor and a soft jazz tune is playing on the pickup. It's like the movie is whispering to itself "there's still time" or maybe "we still have one last night left", because we're looking at people broken who can never be made right again, the pieces were cracked long ago or in faraway places and they can't be found again, so there is this one last night left for everyone. When Bone makes love to Cutter's wife, the one woman he could never conquer, she breaks down and cries. There's not much joy here, but sadness and regret is mixed with a feverish desire for doing things now, even when it's too late.

Milan Cutter's way, aka Cutter and Bone is one of the finest films of the 80's and the finest mystery of that decade. It proves that the salvaged movies are usually treasure of the bunch, and thankfully this movie was saved from oblivion to become a cult classic. One doesn't know where to start with all that works for this cinematic diamond, there are finest performances all around, especially by Heard and Lisa Eichhorn, who mesmerized me with her portrayal of burnt-out wife with loads of existential sorrow and honesty, which she radiates all around her, like a halo, along with beauty from within her troubled soul. The story is well written and the dialogs are great.Czech school of directing always blended well with Hollywood, when Hollywood was about art and not sales, and we have numerous examples of that through the works of Miloš Forman, Karel Reisz and finally Ivan Passer. He directs this film with a sense for bringing out the best from each of the principal characters who are all lost souls, wandering through the wasteland of their lives. Jordan Cronenweth's masterful photography that makes this film look 10 years ahead of it's time, only add to the overall beauty. If you can, be sure not to miss this one. Fantastic.