The Cut review: Orlando Bloom undergoes startling transformation in bleak psychological thriller
When I think of Orlando Bloom‘s film career, my brain immediately goes to The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. Needless to say, The Cut is extremely different from those 20-year-old studio blockbusters, and Bloom shows off a whole new side of himself.
Set 10 years after a career-ending defeat, an unnamed Irish boxer (Bloom) is offered an opportunity for redemption with a major bout in Las Vegas. But there’s a snag – he has to lose 32 pounds in only six days to make his weight class. It’s impossible to lose that much weight safely, so he stops taking the advice of his partner and coach, Caitlin (Caitriona Balfe), and works with a dangerous boxing coach, Boz (John Turturro).
The Cut might look and sound like a sports movie, but it’s not. Firstly, there’s very little boxing. Secondly, it’s actually a psychological thriller about the extreme lengths one person will go to for a shot at redemption, to be a champion again and relive the glory days. The boxer soon realises that he can’t eat or drink anything if he needs to radically drop pounds, so his body becomes absolutely depleted of everything. Obviously, he’s putting his physical health at risk, but his mental health suffers too, with him having hallucinations and delirium-induced outbursts.
The movie becomes so dark – shockingly so – that it verges into horror territory by the end. It may not have been completely necessary to go quite that far (the final act is insane), but it certainly makes it memorable! He truly risks his life to make the cut, and you have to wonder if it’s all worth it. What’s the point of hitting your weight if you’re a starving and dehydrated dried-out husk of a person?! It made me wonder what drastic, potentially illegal measures some real-life boxers take to make their weight. Scary stuff.
Bloom lost around 30 pounds, like his character – but in a much longer time frame – and his physical transformation is staggering. In one of his best performances yet, he speaks with a convincing Irish accent (to my untrained ears) and conveys his tortured soul on a surface level. However, he never truly gets to the heart of the character. It probably doesn’t help that the flashbacks illustrating his horrific childhood trauma are heavy-handed and clunkily inserted into the story.
Balfe does a better job with the emotional requirements and injects some heart into the story. I was keen to know more about the interesting Caitlin, but a couple of allusions to her past are sadly not expanded upon. She goes to battle against Boz, and they’re like the angel and devil on the boxer’s shoulders. She wants him to cut weight safely and responsibly and pull out if it doesn’t work, but Boz doesn’t give a damn about him and will make the weight loss happen by any means necessary. Turturro is formidable as the cutthroat character.
The storytelling in The Cut is a bit shaky, but the committed performances from Bloom, Balfe and Turturro ensure it’s constantly compelling. The final scenes of this wild film will stick with you long after the credits roll.
In cinemas from Friday 5th September