The Big Picture

Cutter’s Way
is an underrated ’80s thriller masterpiece challenging the societal system, with intense performances by Jeff Bridges and John Heard.
Depicting a realistic portrayal of trauma in war veterans,
Cutter’s Way
offers a somber yet compelling storyline.
The film has achieved cult classic status for its stoner vibes and complex friendship dynamics.

There’s like, been a murder, dude. Years before Jeff Bridges graced screens with his defining role in The Big Lebowski, he starred in a darker, grittier stoner noir of sorts. Cutter’s Way is a forgotten, early ’80s thriller masterpiece. Directed by Ivan Passer, the film was a groundbreaking departure for how veterans were portrayed in Hollywood at the time. John Heard (Home Alone) appeared alongside Bridges, delivering one of his greatest lead role performances as an alcoholic Vietnam War vet. Their partnership notably shares a similar dynamic to the central friendship between The Dude and his unstable Vietnam War vet best friend, Walter, played by a buzzing John Goodman, in The Coen Brothers’ classic. Both films have gone on to achieve cult-classic status, but couldn’t contrast each other more in terms of their moods and ambiance.

An excellent noir film coming out towards the end of the neo-noir boom, Passer directed a difficult, cynical film about the state of America in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Heard’s raging, spiraling character, who represents the paranoia and disenchantment Americans felt towards the U.S. Government, especially vets. Cutter’s Way is a somber, buddy-cop film of sorts, with its main investigators being non-sober vigilantes instead. Bridges and Heard have a fierce bond as two best friends who want someone to blame for not just one dead body, but millions.

Cutter’s Way (1981) Cutter’s Way follows Richard Bone, a laid-back gigolo, who witnesses a wealthy man disposing of a body. Cutter convinces Rivhard that they should expose the culprit, believing him to be a local tycoon named J.J. Cord. Cutter, embittered and maimed by his war experiences, uses this murder investigation to challenge the societal system he believes destroyed his life. Release Date February 10, 1982 Director Ivan Passer Cast Jeff Bridges , John Heard , Lisa Eichhorn , Ann Dusenberry , Stephen Elliott , Arthur Rosenberg , Nina van Pallandt , Patricia Donahue Runtime 109 Minutes Main Genre Crime Writers Newton Thornburg , Jeffrey Alan Fiskin Studio United Artists Expand

What Is ‘Cutter’s Way’ About?
Cutter’s Way stars Bridges and Heard as Richard Bone and Alex Cutter. Based upon the novel Cutter & Bonewritten by Newton Thornburg, the womanizing, ambling Bone witnesses the disposal of a dead woman’s body in an alleyway one night after his car breaks down, and turns into the prime suspect before becoming the main witness in the case. Cutter is his alcoholic, paranoid best friend, a Vietnam War vet who lost an eye, arm, and leg in the war. Married to the downtrodden Mo, played by a devastating Lisa Eichorn, she dives further into alcoholism as her husband refuses to address his PTSD.

With loads of anger at the American government but nowhere to put it, Cutter pounces at the opportunity to solve the murder Bone has witnessed. The murder victim was a high school cheerleader whose older sister, Valerie (Ann Dussenbery), joins Cutter and Bone to solve the murder. While attending a Santa Barbra parade, Bone recognizes the prominent business tycoon, J.J. Cord (an unsettling Stephen Elliott) in the crowd, and he believes is the person he saw disposing of the body in the alley. From there, Cutter and Bone cause a raucous trail of death in their wake as Cutter plunges further into pinning the crime on Cord. Bone tries to reel him in, convinced Cutter has gone off the deep end, like everyone else around Bone believes.

‘Cutter’s Way’ Changed the Way War Veterans Were Portrayed in Film

Cutter’s entrance in the film goes off like a lightning bolt, introduced at a dive bar drunk, spouting slurs. He’s anything but a hero, or the classic, romanticized version of veterans Hollywood loves to portray. It’s a fantastic showcase of Heard’s dynamic acting abilities, and Bridges’ excellence at holding back. Cutter is an alcoholic, and finds that the only thing he has to live for is getting answers to the brutal murder in front of him. It’s an underrated Vietnam War film, thanks to John Heard’s pure fury as Cutter, who’s desperate to seek revenge for what his country has done to him. His character was a symbol of the state of America at the time of its release, with many Americans losing faith in the government, especially its vets. The paranoia that pulses through his veins as he becomes more convinced Cord is onto him and Bone jolts the movie, and represents the paranoia everyone in the country felt at corrupt politicians.

Cutter’s Way allowed Hollywood to show the rage war vets felt. Cutter is almost god-like in his prophecies, and with his loss of one eye, the age-old saying of “an eye for an eye” comes to fruition as he goes on a perilous journey towards revenge. Naturally, he has to get even, and take someone else’s “eye” too. Ironically, the main murder suspect, Cord, is never seen without his big, ominous sunglasses. The symbolism of them removes his identity, shielding him from blame, or having to face what he’s supposedly done. Just as it was difficult to blame the American government for what they did in Vietnam, despite millions of deaths on both sides. Though Heard gets to do most of the talking in the movie, raving about justice and death, Bridges communicates just as much through his red-rimmed blue eyes, and permanent grimace.

Jeff Bridges Plays a Womanizing Sleuth Who Lives on a Boat in California
Image via United Artists 

With a California tan and a formidable mustache that had yet to turn into the Lebowski goatee, Bridges often skates across the screen shirtless, unable to be troubled by the increasing obsession Cutter has with nailing Cord. He’s reserved and unbothered, chilling out on boats and trying to seduce any woman he can. Bone has no aspirations, and gets to live on the marina in Santa Barbra for free, while working for a yacht club. It’s easy to imagine that that was The Dude’s job in his youth, before he traded boating for bowling instead. But Bone is still a very different character from The Dude, thanks to his gloomy disposition. In comparison to The Big Lebowski, there’s no romanticization of the unemployed, drug-fueled life in Cutter’s Way. It’s a sobering story of wasted life.

Related Jeff Bridges’ Sexy Murder Mystery Film Is One of His Best Performances Bridges uses his devilish charm to lure you into this dark thriller.

The film was notoriously hard to make or to get funding, and Bridges’s choice to appear in a seething, booze-soaked neo-noir that was an excruciating slow burn was a bold, odd choice for a movie star of his caliber. But it foreshadowed how he would continue to make similar leaps into independent cinema, and refuse to play cookie-cutter, archetype male leads in blockbusters. After Cutter’s Way, he starred in the strange but belovedJohn Carpenter romance film, Starman, as an alien. He then played a starving, mean pianist in The Fabulous Baker Boys, and an embittered DJ in The Fisher King, using his blue eyes to convey selfish, womanizing men, like he did in Cutter’s Way. It signified a change in his role choices, and proved he could play antiheroes, while still somehow being likable.

Similar to ‘The Big Lebowski,’ Jeff Bridges’ Best Friend Is a Paranoid Vietnam War Vet

Who could forget when Walter, so easily pushed to the brink of violence, pulls out a gun at a bowling alley during his “over the line” outburst in The Big Lebowski. Best friend to The Dude, the scene finds Walter escalating situations so he can feel the same rush he felt when he was fighting in the Vietnam War. Always craving danger, Walter carries his trauma in his everyday life, similar to Heard’s character of Cutter, who continues to act like a solider on a battlefield. Bridges plays the calm, cool, and collected best friend to the volatile Walter.

Bridges once again has to deal with the rambling raves of an unstable man in Cutter’s Way, and has a debacle with Alex that once again involves a gun being whipped out at the wrong time. In the tense scene, Cutter and Bone play a game at an amusement park on the water that involves Bone shooting a toy gun to win a prize. Cutter becomes frustrated, and whips out his gun and shoots the target perfectly, causing everyone to jump. As the terrified attendant gives Cutter a stuffed bunny as the prize, Cutter throws it into the ocean and shoots it some more in a blind rage, happy to kill something. Bone cuts in and steals the gun away from Alex, and Bridges’s terror at his best friend is palpable. The conflict Bridges is able to communicate as he is caught between loving his best friend who’s turned into a stranger from the war, while wanting to put a stop to his mission, is what makes Cutter’s Way an excellent study of friendship.

Director Ivan Passer Aimed to Portray a Realistic Depiction of Trauma
Image via United Artists

Cutter’s Way was a rare depiction of a Vietnam War vet. Released during the height of Vietnam War films, Cutter’s Way is vastly different from movies like Coming Home, which is what the director, Ivan Passer aimed to do. Jon Voight starred in the romance war film as a now wheelchair-using Vietnam War vet, Luke Martin, opposite a love-stricken Jane Fonda. It’s a rose-colored, romantic story as the two fall in love, before her husband, Bob (Bruce Dern) comes home. Cutter’s Way was like night and day compared to Coming Home. Cutter’s eye-patch or cane does not define him, and he does not want or need sympathy. His marriage with his wife, Mo, crumbles because of his time in the war, and makes him a crueler man, not a more loving one. Cutter is not charming but vulgar with women, and chases after the suspected murderer, Cord, loudly at a game of Polo in his ratty jeans. No one pays attention to him as he screams, because it’s easier to just ignore him.

Speaking to The Washington Post again in Passer said:

“‘Cutter’ was not your average commercial sure thing…Jon Voight in
Coming Home
and various TV shows, the good guys got wounded and they were even better after that. I felt there was an absolute distortion of what actually goes on when somebody gets maimed internally or physically. It doesn’t usually make them better people. Most of the time, from what I have seen, it makes them dangerous.”

‘Cutter’s Way’ Is a Cult Classic, Thanks to its Stoner Vibes & Wacky Friendship
Image via United Artists

Cutter’s Way was doomed at the box office as audiences did not like its ambiguity or controversial ending. But that was the point. The noir genre is known for its refusal to give tidy or happy endings, and Cutter’s Way might just take the cake for the most provocative neo-noir ending. Since then, it has been re-examined and regarded as a fantastic thriller and commended for its portrayal of PTSD in war veterans. It has gone on to achieve cult-classic status, with die-hard fans committed to stating Heard delivers one of the best performances of the ’80s.

Compelling even in his coldest moments, Bridges’s lead performance in Cutter’s Way laid down a different kind of dark stoner story compared to The Big Lebowski. Both Walter and Alex are cut from the same cloth, and isolated from the world thanks to their traumas. In both movies, Bridges’ characters offer consolidation and friendship to lonely, traumatized men. Few films capture the same tangible rage Heard had as a veteran, and none has been as tragic, thanks to Bone’s inability to ever fully understand, or appreciate Cutter’s anger. But, the friendship of Cutter and Bone remains ageless in its classic pairing of a meandering, womanizing man paired with a wild card. They’re so bad and amateur-like at trying to pin Cord, it’s almost funny. Almost.

Cutter’s Way is currently available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.

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