- 4 months ago
Orlando Bloom gives one of the best performances of his career in this boxing drama - well, it isn't really about boxing - but the film itself is far from a knockout.
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00:00Hello, and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, Orlando Bloom's boxer puts his body
00:05on the line when he tries to make the cut.
00:24Ten years ago, the unnamed boxer played by Orlando Bloom lost his big title fight and
00:29retired. Now he's been given another chance by promoter Donnie, played by Gary Beadle, as a last
00:35minute replacement for another boxer who has died, so long as he hits the limit for the weight class
00:41in a week. But as time runs out, the boxer turns to ruthless trainer Boz, played by John Turturro,
00:48who will do whatever it takes, no matter how extreme and dangerous. The Cut is the latest film
00:54directed by Sean Ellis, who directed Cashback and Anthropoid, and it was the only night film that
00:59the Toronto International Film Festival back in 2024, now Farley hitting cinema screens a year
01:05later. And let's make one thing very clear at the start. This is not a boxing movie, or at least not
01:12in the traditional sense anyway. You've probably seen some of the posters with boxing rings and
01:17Bloom in his trunks and gloves, getting ready to do rounds, and this isn't really that movie.
01:23This ain't Rocky. Sure, the premise might sound familiar at first glance. A boxer who thinks he's
01:29missed his chance gets a miraculous title shot as an underdog comeback kid, and I'm sure the
01:34similarities are intentional, so the film can hit you with a right hook, knock you to the floor,
01:39and then scream in your face, this ain't no fantasy, this is reality! If anything, it might be the
01:44anti-Rocky, because it almost exclusively focuses on all the stuff those films leave in a training
01:49montage, which is the battle before you even step into the ring to fight. Instead of an upbeat set
01:55of highlights, the cut is all about the grind, a succession of ever bleaker lowlights as we journey
02:01into the dark side of the ring. In Rocky, it was gonna fly now, but if the cut had a theme song,
02:07it would likely be gonna vom now. The cut is a pretty scathing indictment of the boxing world,
02:13where corruption reigns supreme. They don't care about the fighter's well-being, they need a body
02:19in that ring, because they've got all the money and sponsors invested in the event. That's the
02:24mindset of Gary Beedle's promoter, who was very obviously inspired by Don King, right down to his
02:30name. Underneath all the bright lights and glamour of a Las Vegas title fight, he's got a notorious
02:35reputation for his shady, unscrupulous practices. The extremes that the boxer go through are not just
02:41unethical, they're increasingly illegal, and they're treated as an open secret by Donnie and his team.
02:48Hell, he actively encourages it and witnesses it during the film, he just wants the fight to go
02:53ahead as planned and doesn't care how. It's a business that puts bodies on the line, chews people
02:59up, and when they're done, just moves right onto the next body. This isn't the first sports movie to
03:05focus on its seedy underbelly, with the most obvious point of comparison being Foxcatcher, especially
03:10that film sequence where Channing Tatum is pushing himself to try and make his weight class. Imagine
03:16a whole film centred around that one bit, and you pretty much got the cut. But mostly the film
03:21functions as a showcase for Orlando Bloom, who easily gives one of his best performances in this
03:26film, and certainly the most committed he's ever been. And I'll fully admit that I've not rated Bloom
03:32especially highly as a dramatic actor in the past. He had that kind of clean-cut pretty boy image from
03:38his work in The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, which were physically demanding action
03:42roles, but he was in ensembles where he was often overshadowed by his co-stars, especially Johnny Depp
03:48in Pirates. Bloom never quite broke out into the massive star he was poised to be at that time,
03:55but recently Bloom's been having a bit of a comeback himself, and maybe he felt a bit of a connection
04:00between himself and the character that he's playing, because his performance in the cut is just as
04:06determined to prove himself, and he is absolutely ferocious in this. You can see it physically as
04:12Bloom did the cut that the boxer does in this movie, although needless to say in a slower, much
04:18more healthy way than what happens on screen. Apparently they filmed the movie in reverse order,
04:23so he got into the shape that he needed to for the ending, and then worked backwards from there.
04:28But the actual emotional performance is much more subtle, because the boxer is very internalised.
04:34Indeed, that's the question the movie is asking. What drives someone to do this and push themselves
04:40so hard? To depersonalise themselves completely for the sake of their goal? Hence why the boxer is
04:46unnamed and anonymised during the film. What the movie suggests is that burning desire, that hunger for
04:52accomplishment, it's usually to try and fill a gaping void within a person that they need something to fill
04:58it with. And the boxer has a whole lot of unprocessed trauma that just tumbles right out of him at the
05:05tiniest provocation. We see in flashbacks his childhood at the Heist of the Troubles, where he's a bullied,
05:10frightened kid who was often found getting beaten up. His mother, played by Claire Dunn, tells him that
05:16there are two kinds of people in this world. The people who get hurt, and those that hurt them first.
05:21And clearly the boxer was determined to be the latter, but that hasn't stopped him from being severely
05:27damaged. Those scars never really went away, he's just buried it under his muscles and bravado.
05:34I do think it's telling that one of the best scenes in the movie is one where the boxer's wife,
05:38Caitlyn, play by Katerina Balfe, gets him to actually open up for once about his feelings.
05:43There's some genuine emotion between Balfe and Bloom in that scene, which is too often caged up in aggression.
05:49And Balfe is often the unfortunate victim of that, in a role which doesn't give her much to do.
05:55Caitlyn is the daughter of a tough trainer who wanted sons instead. She's grown up amongst boxing,
06:01but she has the metal to stand up for herself in a man's world. But that has also damaged her,
06:08and she's a recovering addict who went clean when she fell in love with the boxer. That void,
06:14that hurt, that desire to be loved was filled at that point, and it gave her something to fight for.
06:20But the unfortunate thing is, it didn't do the same for the boxer. His need for the validation
06:26of the belt means that he doesn't truly appreciate her fighting in his corner, and he keeps pushing
06:32her away and burning bridges with his entourage. And so the Outlander star is constantly playing the
06:38same scene, one where she tries to impose a limit on how far her husband is going to go,
06:42which is then ignored and then steamrolled over again and again and again until she simply cannot
06:49take it anymore. It's the thankless task of having to be the voice of reason, but the backstory they've
06:54given her can't make up for that, when the relationship between her and Bloom should have
06:58been at the heart of this movie, but it's underdeveloped. And I've mentioned Foxcatcher already,
07:04but speaking of 2014 Oscar nominees, the cut owes an enormous debt to Whiplash,
07:09which it is pretty much the boxing movie version of. When John Turturro enters the movie,
07:14he's essentially doing J.K. Simmons' bit. He may not fill the air with profanity-laden screaming,
07:20but he's the same kind of emotionally manipulative bully, just in a quieter but similarly intense
07:26register. Bars is like the devil on the shoulder, always constantly trying to shame the boxer out of
07:32quitting and being negative. Instead of asking if he's rushing or dragging, he warns the boxer,
07:38there is no ripcord. Once he starts, he doesn't stop, and he's true to his word.
07:46Turturro knows how to play a slimeball villain, and he gladly chews on the scenery as he forces the
07:52boxer through an ever more punishing regime of sauna trips, blood drains, dodgy substances,
07:58and even worse. It's do or die. And as the boxer gets weaker and more exhausted,
08:05barely even conscious at times towards the end, the more Turturro dominates the film. In later scenes
08:12where he's bathed in a sickly green light, Turturro's smile looks practically demonic.
08:19But what Turturro isn't able to do is make the character feel believable. Even with the corruption
08:24of the boxing world, someone who is completely immoral and reckless as Bars feels very over the top.
08:30At one point, Caitlyn threatens to get his boxing license suspended, which is a fair point. How does
08:36he still have that? His methods are so extreme barbaric that he nearly kills the boxer a couple
08:42of times from pushing him too hard. In fact, those are the few moments where he seems to have a flicker
08:47of humanity, or at least some kind of panic guilt, but that's probably from knowing that his career
08:52would be over if it did. But he just doesn't seem like a person. There's some very brief lines that
08:58imply that he's come from a broken, abusive background himself, but he's more a caricature
09:03than anything real. The nuance just simply isn't there in the writing or the performance.
09:09Even Simmons in Whiplash wasn't a taskmaster all of the time.
09:14Which brings us to the fundamental problem with the cut, in that it just doesn't feel
09:18especially plausible. Already the premise where Bloom's boxer has to lose over 30 pounds in the
09:23space for a week stretches credibility, but a lot of what happens after is so strenuous that he's
09:29hardly even able to stand. And we're meant to believe that he's going to have a title fight
09:33naturally last, when he's almost knocking on heaven's door in the final hours before the bout.
09:39At times, what happens in the film borders on abject body horror. And maybe the gloves of realism
09:44should have come off, because trying to ground this actually makes it seem more implausible.
09:49There's moments where the boxer is hallucinating that his opponent is taunting him in the hallway,
09:54and some stylish moments like a shot where a dozen Blooms training fill the corridor.
10:01But maybe it would have been smarter to lean into the surrealism, something like the substance for
10:06men. Apparently Ellis did actually trim back the body horror that went too far, but the movie is in a
10:13weird space where it ends up being both too much and not enough simultaneously.
10:18This is especially true during the climactic weigh-in, which is a literal cut too far,
10:24and my suspension of disbelief just totally snapped at that point. It's meant to be the shocking moment,
10:29but either you do that as a grotesque final punchline that ends the film, or you don't do it at all,
10:35because it's absolutely ridiculous. Somehow the movie keeps going for a couple more scenes,
10:40even though it makes no sense whatsoever, because there's no way things will be allowed to continue
10:46after that point. But I also found the movie somewhat disappointing as an examination of toxic
10:51masculinity and obsession, which it's clearly gesturing towards, because while it shows the
10:56boxer's damaging behaviours, it doesn't really explore it. There's a point where the boxer talks
11:01to a sick child in the hospital, and he utters the film's tagline,
11:05your body is a tool, mind over matter, and victory begins in the head. But clearly the boxer's mind is
11:13sick, and what he's doing isn't resilience, it's punishment. The movie needed a moment where he truly
11:20recognises that he's hit rock bottom to give some emotional heft to him trying to take the steps
11:25to come back from the brink. Certainly there's never a moment where he finally rejects Boz's control
11:31over him. Instead, it all feels rushed into the final scene, and it does seem like the ending
11:37might have been reconfigured. There's no big boxing scene at the end, which is fine for a movie which
11:43isn't really about that, but it seems like they might have done at one point, because we see these
11:49sporadic flash forwards of Bloom in the ring, and they look like trims from a much longer ending that
11:56have been repurposed throughout the movie because they're intense. You know, these shots of Bloom
12:00screaming in tight close-ups, but they're not consistently used enough to be a visual metaphor.
12:07And what's worse is that the ending wants to have its cake and eat it. The whole film is meant to
12:12have a shock about how far the box will go, and the lengths that sports people will go at the cost
12:17of themselves and those around them. But then also implies that the ends justify the means. It's a
12:24confused and contradictory ending that undermines what the film is trying to accomplish,
12:29and doesn't really satisfy. The cut is easily some of the best work that Orlando Bloom has done
12:35today, and it's a performance that has actually made me reassess him as an actor somewhat.
12:39Certainly, it's far different from the last time he played a boxer in the goofy mockumentary,
12:44The Calcium Kid. Although, hilariously, they do appear to have used one of the promo stills from
12:50that movie very early on. But Bloom's holding up a film that is very uneven, and while ambitious,
12:56doesn't quite know what it wants to say, ultimately. Certainly, the script needed a few cuts of its own,
13:02and better expansion upon its character and themes, which are gruelling, but they're also surface level.
13:08The film isn't a knockout, but Bloom is here, and he seems to be growing into a promising character actor.
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13:40Anyway, until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.
13:44I'll see you next time.
13:46I'll see you next time.
13:48Bye.
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