White Wall Cinema: Cutter’s Way

Hailed by Time Out as “nothing less than a modern masterpiece,” Cutter’s Way serves as the closing salvo in a lineage of taut, politically charged thrillers such as All the President’s Men, The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, and The Conversation. Empire magazine called it “a classy monument to the paranoia of post-Watergate America.” The film also fits neatly into the tradition of L.A. Neo-Noir cinema such as The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, Thief, Body Heat, Blue Velvet, To Live & Die in L.A., L.A. Confidential, Heat and even The Big Lebowski and Mulholland Drive.

The film features an exceptional performance by Jeff Bridges (Lebowski, True Grit) as Richard Bone, a laid-back gigolo who becomes entangled in a murder investigation after witnessing the body of a dead cheerleader dumped in a quiet Santa Monica neighbourhood. When his friends, Cutter (Heard), a disabled Vietnam veteran, and his intelligent, grounded wife Maureen (Lisa Eichhorn – Yanks, The Talented Mr. Ripley), learn about the murder, Cutter channels all his obsessive, unpredictable, and paranoid energy into confronting the suspected culprit: a powerful local oil tycoon, dragging the trio into an ever spiralling series of events. Portraying cynicism, vulnerability, and simmering anger all at once, Heard is positively electrifying in the role, and the entire film radiates with a unique neo-noir energy, that makes it both the definitive final statement on the post-Watergate era and a primal scream against the erosion of the American dream.

Finally restored in 4K, Cutter’s Way is an engrossing, unusual, thrilling, and intelligent murder mystery with sharp political undertones, a landmark of American cinema that too few have experienced in all its glory.

• DOORS: 7.20pm*
• START TIME: 7.50pm*
• RUN TIME: 109 mins
• CERT: 15 (Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult).

*Please note – doors open at 7.20pm, Please try to allow extra time to get seated prior to the performance start time of 7.50pm. There will usually be no admittance from 20 minutes after the films stated start time. No hot food or alcohol from outside the premises is allowed. All alcoholic drinks consumed on the premises must be purchased from the bar as per the conditions of the venue’s licence