A washed-out boxer (Orlando Bloom) struggles to make a comeback when he can't match the required weight limit. His sanity and body are tested with dietary experiments and a hardened, remorseless coach (John Turturro).
Orlando Bloom, like you've never seen him before. Since his breakout role as the elven archer Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and setting sail in the Pirates of the Caribbean, it's easy to reduce the British actor to a pretty-faced Hollywood star. But in The Cut, Bloom attempts a jab at an "Oscar-baity" role, shedding 52 pounds for a ripped physique, putting on an Irish accent, and frowning in front of the camera in sweat-soaked slow-motion, like a feature in one of those "best acting compilation" videos. Credit where it's due, Bloom is heavily convincing as the battered and scarred protagonist known as "The Boxer" throughout the story. Having grown during The Troubles with hardly a bite to eat, The Boxer is a self-made underdog who bites into whatever life swerves past him. Now, to make the required welterweight cut, he must go through hell on earth in a psychological and physical struggle that you don't ordinarily see in a boxing drama. And for his part, Bloom does give his all in arguably his career-best performance. In moments of prolonged silence and diaphragm-stretching workouts, the man conveys the struggle that any athlete might face when they're held at gunpoint to cut down weight over a fortnight. Now, if only the rest of the film added any meat to these bare bones.
The Cut tries overturning familiar boxing cliches as part psychological drama and part body horror. Director Sean Ellis, who previously dabbled in horror projects like The Broken and The Cursed, injects a dose of mind-bending psychological tension to The Cut as The Boxer begins to lose grip of his reality with hours of sauna-sweating and dodgy pseudoscientific diets of pills and drugs. So, instead of tearing a page out of Rocky or the bazillion post-Rocky boxing films, it's refreshing to see Ellis's genre-blending experiment resemble more perfection-chasing psychological dramas like Black Swan and Whiplash. We've seen enough of those rousing training montages. This time around, the camera confines us within the interiors of the boxer's head, pounding with drug-induced palpitations, traumatic flashbacks, and the occasional craving for a sweet candy bar.
A promising venture on paper, but never more than the sum of its parts. Justin Bull's screenplay is so busy inflicting one throbbing punch after another to its protagonist that there's little space left for tender moments of empathy. A final shock in the end is still not enough to compensate for the film's wearisome pace, one-dimensional characters (the emotionally distant boxer, the unorthodox, tough-as-nails coach, and an underused Caitríona Balfe as the boxer's partner concerned for his safety), and its tendency to dive into too many influences without fleshing out any. Given the oversaturated and all-too-predictable state of the boxing genre, The Cut is still a valiant effort; a decent one-time watch. And yet it's enticing to think of a director's cut willing to peel more layers than settle for slow-burning, physical shock value.
A ripped and tragic Orlando Bloom delivers the goods in a tonally confused boxing drama.
