Cutter's Way

Bone's car breaks down in the rain one night in Santa Barbara and he sees a man dumping something in an alley. A girl's body is found there the next day. Bone wants no part of it; his friend Cutter, back from Vietnam with one eye, one arm and one leg, makes it the cause of his life. Ivan Passer directed. Jeff Bridges plays Bone, John Heard plays Cutter, Lisa Eichhorn plays Cutter's wife. The source is Newton Thornburg's novel. Its distribution story is as strange as its plot. It opened in New York in March 1981 as Cutter and Bone with almost nothing spent on promotion, and the major papers and network critics savaged it. United Artists decided to pull it after a week. The following week Time and Newsweek published glowing pieces. The studio's specialty arm took over distribution, the title was changed to Cutter's Way, and it was reissued without a frame being cut. It still failed commercially, but it remains one of the last examples of seventies bleakness. Who it is for: viewers who like dark, unresolved American crime films. Who it is not for: anyone after a clear answer; the film is not interested in proving who did it.