Anyone who came of age during Orlando Bloom’s heyday — when the British actor became a drop-dead gorgeous sex symbol in the early 2000s as the long-haired Legolas in “Lord of the Rings” or the audacious Will Turner in “Pirates of the Caribbean” — will probably be a little shaken by the actor’s 180-degree turn in “The Cut.” A sports drama with traces of body horror running through its veins, director Sean Ellis’s film disfigures Bloom’s pristine face with some prosthetics (done to perfection by makeup designer Mark Coulier) to play a nameless retired Irish boxer desperate for a second chance at stardom.
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Privately schooled and Katy Perry’s longtime sidekick, Bloom isn’t exactly a natural choice for such an underdog, but the broken nose and droopy eyelids he dons successfully dispel most of his inherent movie-star glamour. And yet, watching the film, there’s something missing from his performance — an inner intensity, a hunger — that convinces as much as all the makeup and deepens the often disturbing story of punishing one’s body in pursuit of greatness into something more compelling.
Director: Sean EllisWriters: Justin Bull, Mark LaneStars: Orlando Bloom, CaitrÃona Balfe, John Turturro
Beginning with a quick look at the last major fight of the boxer’s career, before an injury led to his being ousted from the glitzy world of Las Vegas prizefighting, “The Cut” quickly lays out the humbler life he’s built for himself in the years since.
On the one hand, there’s the loving relationship with his partner and former trainer Caitlin (CaitrÃona Balfe, compelling if woefully underserved in a typical “concerned spouse” role), running his own gym where they offer lessons to kids, and having enough of a local hero clout that there are still younger students begging their mothers to take photos with him. On the other hand, he has to deal with foul-mouthed, disrespectful teenagers, and a nagging feeling that he could have had and perhaps deserved better.
So when promoter Donny (Gary Beadle, exaggerating the grim story a bit) shows up with an offer to replace a boxer who died unexpectedly before a big title fight, the boxer is desperate enough for another chance to accept the offer despite all the warning signs.
Chief among them is that the weight limit to be eligible is 154 pounds. When Caitlin questions him as he tries to evade the question, he's currently hovering around 186 pounds and has about a week to shed the fat to qualify.
While you might initially expect "The Cut" to get over this complication with a montage of training to get to boxing, it soon becomes clear that the battle to shed the pounds is the real fight the movie is about. At their anonymous Las Vegas hotel, Caitlin and the boxer’s team put the athlete to work, putting him on a diet of protein and salads while he undergoes constant training in a reckless effort to lose weight quickly.
It’s obvious from a very early point that there’s no way this can end healthily, but the boxer is too preoccupied with the futile promise of the title to pay it much attention, and Ellis dramatizes the psychological toll that crash dieting and excessive grinding takes with patience and a convincing touch of horror.
Warning signs appear early but infrequently: visions of blood seeping from flesh, flashes of figures from the boxer’s past appearing in the hallways as his brain aches from the strain it’s putting on his body. Particularly disturbing and painful are the scenes in which Bloom binge-eats and purges, swallowing a chocolate bar before vomiting it into the toilet.
Desperate to lose weight, he alienates himself from his team and especially Caitlin by taking on Boz (John Turturro, wickedly funny in a role he could probably play in his sleep), a trainer known for pushing his charges to the limit and engaging in ethically dubious techniques. Putting it bluntly during their initial meeting, Boz says he sees the boxer “as nothing more than a poker chip,” which is part of the reason he’s hired; Caitlin cares too much to get the results that are needed.
“The Cut” works best as a purely visceral experience, as an excavation into the physical and psychological hell that Boz pushes Bloom’s character into. Ellis films the film’s world with a dark, grim, workmanlike sheen (Las Vegas has never been less glamorous than it is here), but is willing to take nauseating turns into dreamlike horror.
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