The first film in my schedule for TIFF 2024 was The Cut. During the festival, I usually like to go in mostly blind without doing a lot of research on a film unless there’s unavoidable buzz around it, which was not the case for this film. This blog post describes my experience watching this film, and the fatal flaw in the story that in my opinion significantly hurts what would otherwise have been a gripping tragedy. This blog post will obviously reveal the plot, so if you’re planning on watching it, stop here.

The story starts by introducing Orlando Bloom’s character, a has-been boxing champion who now runs a small boxing gym with his wife (Caitriona Balfe) in Ireland. We learn that this once revered, celebrated hero has been diminished to cleaning revoltingly dirty toilets at a humble gym where his students don’t respect him enough to abide by his training instructions. There are recurring flashbacks, characterized by blood splatter and black-and-white shots, of a bitter defeat that effectively put an end to the boxing career of “The Wolf of Dublin”. A chance to return to the ring and to glory presents itself soon after. The only obstacle in the way is that the boxer has to lose a significant amount of weight before the fight, which is happening in a matter of days.

At this point in the story, I thought “Oh, I see where this is going. A washed-up hero gets another chance to prove his greatness, but must beat unthinkable odds and overcome impossible hurdles.” But then the story takes an unexpected but intriguing turn.

As Orlando Bloom and his wife travel to Vegas for this fight and reunite with their old team and close friends, it quickly becomes clear that the boxer will not lose the required amount of weight despite the gruelling exercise and diet plans. Enter Boz (John Turturro). Boz has a “goals justify any means” attitude who is all about the results. “Anybody who’s not a champion is a loser” he says, constantly deriding another fighter he’s training in the same luxurious Vegas gym. Against objections from his wife and his friends, the boxer, now appearing to base his entire sense of self on the outcome of this fight, agrees to train with Boz. His exercises become even harsher, his food allowance even smaller.

As time progresses, we find that even with the overwhelming pressure the boxer is taking on, he’s still not on track to lose enough weight in time. Boz’s extreme weight-loss measures are revealed when he offers the boxer drugs (which he accepts while ignoring his wife’s protests) & drains the boxer’s blood. This culminates in a physical altercation during which the boxer punches his friend as both they and his wife leave Vegas.

The other fighter under Boz’s mentorship dies due to an overdose of the same drug Orlando Bloom has been taking. They chop his body into pieces, take him out to a desert and bury him. At this point in the film, Orlando Bloom is in a perpetual haze, barely able to stand up or keep his eyes open. The day of the fight arrives, and the boxer is helped up to the scale by his handlers, and he’s marginally overweight. He takes a large knife from a nearby table, cuts off two of his own fingers, gets up on the scale again, and voila! He’s below the target weight.

I was so absorbed into the story, eyes fixed on the screen. What I expected to be a very cut-and-dry plot had turned out to be something amazing. The boxer, in his misguided, narcissistic quest to reclaim an irretrievable past, had given up everything he had: his integrity, his wife, his friends and anybody else who cared about him, and literally his own fingers. He had stooped to the lowest of lows. All that was left for this tragedy to conclude was for him to take part in the fight, and to die for nothing.

And this is where things started to go really wrong. Because the boxer (yes the same boxer who could barely stand up or keep his eyes open), takes part in the fight (the fight does not appear on screen), and defeats another fighter, supposedly in top shape. And afterwards, while waiting for his victory dinner, in a phone conversation with his wife they simply move on as if he had not violently rejected his wife’s attempts at stopping him from stepping on all the values they shared.

Throughout the film, Orlando Bloom excels in portraying the broken hero, a physically challenging role for which he lost 52 pounds in 3 months. Similarly, Caitriona Balfe also impresses in her portrayal of a partner devoted to someone with self-destructive tendencies. Despite all of this, I was left unsatisfied because of the unconvincing and logically dubious ending. In my view, The Cut would have been a far more commendable work had it not been for its conclusion.

During the Q & A after the film, an audience member asked if there was ever a version of the film where the boxer doesn’t win the fight to which Sean Ellis responded, “No, but we did have a version where the fight is shown on screen,” emphasizing the creative decision to exclude the actual fight. It certainly would have been bizzare to see a half-awake, stumbling Orlando Bloom, still-bleeding from having cut-off his own limbs, beat his rival. Later he described the film as a “love story”, which it certainly was not in my opinion.

Ultimately, despite a promising premise and engaging first half, the film falters due to its implausible and thematically inconsistent ending.