At this point in time, boxing movies have become such a highly utilized genre that it is hard for any director to come up with something new about how the sport is presented. The Cut, directed by Sean Ellis, manages to work its way around this challenge by placing an emphasis on physical and psychological difficulties that take place outside the ring, and emphasizing on the weight making aspect as well as the general struggle to make weight. The movie attempts a number of things at once such as employing a flashback structure that is never fully realized but in the end, these effects are subordinate to Orlando Bloom as an unnamed Irish brawler whose performance is raw and transformative in every respect.
The protagonist of Bloom called ‘the Boxer’ in the plot summary but irritably not referred to by anybody in the film spends most of the film’s length preparing for a title fight but is only shown participating in the match one time in “The Cut.” The Junior Fights winner is facing one of his opponents and appears to be winning when off screen, something that is never shown but a possibility that he sees the winner of the fight being a mystery to him causing the attack and scoring a damaging blow close to the eyebrow.
In Ireland, 10 years have passed and the Boxer now runs a failing gym together with his wife Caitlin (Caitríona Balfe) although at one moment he can be seen pushing himself to vomit. Life has moved on for him, but his history seems to be inseparable from him, a notion that Bloom embodies in every scene and which becomes clearer when his character has a shot at stepping into the ring for an epic bout in Las Vegas also the condition is somewhat outrageous. Twelve weeks in assuming this position went the previous fighter, who died from dehydration during the course of the training so the Boxer will have a week to lose thirty pounds (38 relatives that more than most people would be aspirants of losing in several months).
As it is often the case with transformations worthy of an Oscar nomination, ontogenic cell processes are key and there is quite a bit of that in this picture or equally, radical changes in hair and makeup artistry. Both certainly help to describe the transformation of Bloom, his ear and buzzed hair with little pieces missing from above the brow say something about the amount of abuse he endured. But what makes Bloom such a dominant figure is his behavior. The Boxer has a permanent frown, as though irritated and on constant alert, with eyes that dart purposefully as if scouting for anything useful. There is a sense of desire that is hidden and muscles that are unusually taut, giving off the impression of a difficult childhood experience. Everything about him, the way he moves, and even the way he speaks is as though he is heavily weighted, and at times, he has to growl to say a word. If Bloom was not so startlingly accurate in the way he moves, it would be caricature like, like a character sketch of Connor McGregor, because Bloom actually believes he has been through a different lifetime and is not merely pretending to have.
First, when Caitlin assumes the role of the head trainer and the couple selects their own crew. “The Cut”, mixes these two plots, making the fight between family vs obsession as more of a triangulated love story. Adrian and Mickey in the “Rocky” movies are actually one and the same which is more of an internal struggle for Caitlin (and more of an active one) than usually for a sports movie wife, who barely leaves the kitchen. However, the complications increase tenfold when, after refusing to leave the heavy weight limit and subjecting himself to torture, the Boxer opts to bring aboard a new combatant. This new combatant is John Turturro’s Boz, a man of contemptible character and demonic persona, who gets results because winning is the only thing he cares about and loves.
Through intense training scenes, coupled with pained and colored images of tasteless food (only for sustenance), ‘The Cut’ seeks to change the perceptions of what normal training montages should be by incorporating elements of horror, and as an added bonus, the distortions of a sedentary mega male’s perspective. At the same time, Ellis keeps moving back to the Boxer’s past in black and white swatching residing in the mid troubles Irish conflict. These are supposed to give background to the Boxer’s neuroses, but this is already a character that Bloom, quite in a morbid way, exaggerates so much that these scenes simply become background. Is such the case if the scene fail to add tension to the training scences of the character which seems to happen when they are interjected into the scenes.
The tenuous backgrounder of The Boxer, if there is one, provides a garish context within which one can understand the man’s persistent fears, but it takes forever to clarify. It would have been better had “The Cut” for instance stayed fixated on its hellish physical ordeal instead of veering off into other aspects. One of those moments that needn’t rely on expository kitsch such as the damn hip hop tracks that are needlessly sprinkled throughout the film. Kevin Ellis, who plays the role of the character and director at the same time, uses very peculiar forms of horror to improve the narrative of the Boxer’s thirst for pain and determination in fact, ‘The Cut’ is amongst the few boxing films that don’t have a single scene depicting the exhilaration and thrill of actual boxing as a sport, which is already sad enough and doesn’t need to be interrupted often.
As a boxer, demonstrating an emotional wall is only one of the reasons as to why the films focus on such a harsh aspect of sports is well justified, as portrayed in Bloom’s compelling performances. While there is perhaps a more focused and thus more impactful rendition of “The Cut” somewhere, what is seen on screen is remarkable in itself and enables Bloom to finally establish his credentials as a performer of great note, not for his determination and effort, but because of the amazing finished product.
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