Boxing movies are an over-the-top genre these days, and it’s hard for any filmmaker to come up with a way to bring the sport to the big screen. Sean Ellis’s “The Cut” finds a way around this problem by focusing on the physical and psychological struggles outside the ring, particularly the grueling battle to lose weight. The film tries several things at once, including a flashback structure that doesn’t quite connect, but its ultimate impact is in Orlando Bloom’s powerful, transformative performance as the unknown Irish boxer.
In Cutting, the film's protagonist—referred to in press reports as “The Boxer,” but never mentioned in the film—is seen fighting a professional boxing match just once. During the film's brief prologue, the skilled boxer appears to be on his way to another victory, when something mysterious and unseen distracts him from what's happening offscreen—something in the ether that only he can see—which leads to his opponent gaining the upper hand and opening a deep, career-threatening gash above his eye.
A decade later, the boxer is diligently running a rundown gym in Ireland with his wife Caitlin (Caitriona Balfe), and at one point can be seen forcing himself to vomit. His life may have changed, but his past seems to live with him, a notion that Bloom embodies perfectly at every turn, most evident when his character is given the opportunity to return to the ring for one big fight in Las Vegas—on one confusing condition. As he is replacing a former fighter who died of dehydration during his training, the boxer must lose 30 pounds in a single week (more than most people would hope to take months) in order to make it to a weight class.
Cinematic transformations that are described as “Oscar-worthy” can often be attributed to physical changes—there are plenty of those to be found here, and much of it on screen—or even radical hair and makeup decisions. Both of these certainly contribute to Bloom’s transformation, as his cauliflower ear and the dents in his short hair and above his eyebrow tell their own story of the punishment he has received. What sets Bloom’s performance apart, however, is the way he carries himself. The boxer is always angry and alert, with eyes that seem to dart and look for opportunity. He has a pent-up hunger, and the taut facial muscles that suggest a tough upbringing. When he moves, and even when he speaks, it’s as if he’s been burdened, sometimes having to growl just to get the words out. It might come across as cartoonish, like a Conor McGregor impersonation, if Bloom weren’t so realistic in his movements, as if he’s not only imagined a different past for himself to get to this place, but has somehow lived it.
At first, when Caitlin takes on the role of head trainer and the couple picks their own crew, “The Cut” takes an almost reflexive approach to boxing cinema, dramatizing the battle between family and obsession by bringing the two together. In the language of the “Rocky” films, Adrian and Mickey are one and the same, which creates a greater internal conflict for Caitlin (who is more active) than a sports movie wife on the sidelines. However, the complications multiply tenfold when the boxer, unable to lose weight despite pushing his body to the brink, decides to bring in a new trainer into the fold, Boz (John Turturro), an arrogant, practically demonic entity who gets results because, as he puts it, he loves no one or anything but winning.
With grueling training scenes and shots that contain small, flavorless bits (just enough to survive), “The Cut” turns the typical training montage into its own nightmare movie, with a disturbing dose of quiet male eating disorder on the side. Meanwhile, Ellis keeps flashing back to the boxer’s childhood in Trouble-torn Ireland through black-and-white outtakes. These clips attempt to show the neurosis behind the boxer’s mental state, but Bloom already embodies this character so fully (and so strangely) that these scenes become flat—a feeling that is only magnified when you start to deprive the training scenes of their tension whenever they appear.
The boxer’s origin story, such as it is, has terrifying dimensions that make his recurring fears seem spot on, but it takes forever to explain. “The Cut” might have been better off if it had stayed focused on his hellish physical ordeal. The psychology of the tragic dimensions can actually be drawn out in poetic ways, rather than requiring literal detail (which goes hand in hand with the film’s soundtrack, with tracks explaining the events on screen). Ellis, who also serves as his own cinematographer, even uses pleasing self-horror imagery to enhance the boxer’s story of motivation and corporal punishment—“The Cut” is a rare boxing film that lacks a single moment of in-ring seduction or competitive glory—and it’s just enough of a bleakness to not require a constant cut.
The fact that the boxer is isolated from his pain should explain the film’s take on the toxicity of the sport, because Bloom’s harrowing performance does. And while there is a more streamlined and therefore effective version of “cut” somewhere, what remains on screen is as painful as it is, and ultimately allows Bloom to establish himself as a truly great actor—not because of the lengths he is willing to go, but because of the enchanting end result.
