Word: cutter
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STILL, it's obvious that Passer could have made a thriller. He clearly has the talent. It's clear too, that he could have made a "relationship" piece about Cutter and Bone and Mo. When Bone and Mo finally do sleep together while Cutter's off playing detective, the entire scene is filled with such delicacy--never in a film has there been a better exploration of unfaithfulness with all its anticlimactic manifestations--that it's clear Passer is something of a visionary. Or more importantly, he's a visionary without epic pretensions. Perhaps it's his intent all along...
...first remarkable thing about this film is it's air of lazy progress. Cutter and Bone know each other so well that very little is set up in the usual Hollywood ways. In some respects, they have no sacred cows--Cutter's cynicism gives him the leeway to breach any subject, from the sexual tension between him, a cripple, Bone, the stud, and Maureen, the long-suffering wife, and yet still stay within the realm of a "joke." Cutter is immensely likable, immensely smart, and you realize that what's different here is that very rarely have we seen characters...
...film, that lazy peculiarly Southern California lighting, or else it is a misty night. The surfaces are always reflected in some gas-lit glow--a shadow of the "real" California of travel posters and television shows. Director Ivan Passer has given his characters enough personalities to be interesting (Cutter is constantly mimicking Ahab), but more often than not he resists making them fit together too neatly...
...some ways, though, Passer ends up working against himself. For beneath the relationships between the three protagonists, the plot grinds on, involving a murder that Bone has been a partial witness to. Bone suspects that a wealthy oil man mighthave done the slaying, and Cutter--claiming the world is short on heroes and with the victims's sister as an accomplice--sets out to ensnare, via blackmail, the oil man. All of this is seen through Bone's eyes, and the uncertainty he has about his own testimony makes the who whodunit air tenuous. Maybe it's all just Cutter...
Save for one or two which don't work, however, the performances are extraordinary. Bridges plays the languid stud with perfection. His Golden Boy is the perfect quirkly foil for Cutter's sometimes maudlin, been-to-hell-and-back humor and disrespect. Cutter uses his maiming to control people at times, but he knows he's doing it, and it becomes, like Bones' good looks, just another method of dealing. And they know this. They've read the same psych books we have. To see Cutter coquettishly discussing "duty" to get out of a drunk driving...