Movie Review: THE CUT

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 5th, 2025 / 05:17 PM

THE CUT movie poster | ©2025 Republic Pictures

Rating: R
Stars: Orlando Bloom, Caitríona Balfe, John Turturro, Gary Beadle, Claire Dunne, Eric D. Smith, Adonis Anthony, Mohammed Mansaray, Ed Kear
Writer: Justin Bull, story by Mark Lane
Director: Sean Ellis
Distributor: Paramount/Republic Pictures
Release Date: September 5, 2025

Anyone on a diet and exercise program, no matter how restrictive and/or punishing, is bound to feel better about it after watching THE CUT.

At first, THE CUT seems like it’s going to be a standard sports redemption story, notable mainly for an air of sincerity that makes it feel like director Sean Ellis and writer Justin Bull, working from a story by Mark Lane, believe they’re doing something new and different. Turns out, they are.

Our protagonist Harney (Orlando Bloom), called “the Boxer” in the credits and “the Irishman” by sportscasters, is in a championship fight. At one moment, he seems to freeze and sustains a gash above his left eye, going down in defeat.

Ten years later, Harney is coaching kids’ boxing at a gym he owns with his wife/trainer Caitlin (Caitríona Balfe) in their native Ireland. He also does maintenance; she does the books.

In the news, a boxer died of suspected dehydration ahead of a big championship fight. Shortly thereafter, Harney and Caitlin go to dinner with major fight promoter Donny (Gary Beadle), who would like Harney to step in for the deceased boxer. Turns out that Harney called Donny, rather than the other way around. For all his seeming contentment, Harney really wants back in the ring.

The fight is in a week. This might not be so bad, except that, to qualify as a super-welterweight, a contestant can’t weigh more than 154 pounds. Harney’s current weight is 186. This means he’s effectively got six days to lose thirty-two pounds to make “the cut.”

Caitlin doesn’t think it can be done, but Donny insists that it can. After a bit of arguing (no guesses as to who’s going to win this one), Donny brings in his fixer Boz (John Turturro), who says he can get Harney down to fighting weight in the allotted amount of time.

Boz’s methods could generously be called unorthodox, or more specifically illegal, dangerous, and sadistic. Boz says he can succeed because he doesn’t care at all about Harney as a person, only about winning at all costs.

Actor Turturro and director Ellis persuade us that this last is true. We don’t doubt Boz’s amoral determination. What we do question – and wonder why Harney and Donny don’t – is how, at the end of an increasingly hallucinatory spiral, anyone is supposed to go out and withstand (never mind win) a pro fight.

Ellis and writer Bull continually deepen our empathy with Harney’s disorientation, complete with shots that look like one thing and turn out to be something else entirely. At one point, what appears to be a red-glowing box resolves into the taillights of a retreating car on a desert highway.

Additionally, they inject some unconventionality into the athlete/trainer relationship. Boz’s indifference to Harney is mutual. Customarily in these scenarios, the athlete responds to the trainer with either filial affection or rebellion. Here, they view each other as a means to an end. In other hands, this might be distancing (if they aren’t invested, why should we be?), but here it comes off as refreshingly honest and non-manipulative.

The filmmakers also have a nice way with revelations, teasing them out, making us speculate that they’re throwing the bits away entirely before sliding them in quietly. These include flashbacks to Harney’s childhood as a boy (Eric D. Smith) living out of a car with his protective mother (Claire Dunne) in Troubles-era Ireland.

Bloom gives a committed performance as the boxer, so transfixed by his goal that he is often in a world of his own. He does radiate love and respect for Balfe’s Caitlin, and the two actors have powerful chemistry together. Balfe convincingly portrays Caitlin’s philosophical acuity when she articulates what may be THE CUT’s central question: whether it is possible to permanently quell one’s demons via action over a contained period.

Beadle gets his Donny right on the dividing line between credibility and shadiness and Mohammed Mansaray is intriguingly unpredictable as another fighter being trained by Boz. Adonis Anthony and Ed Kear are sympathetic as members of the boxer’s training team.

There are some matters, meta and textual, that beg our indulgence. Perhaps the largest of these is that even someone as self-flagellating as the Boxer and someone else as canny and corrupt as Donny would commit to this timeline.

Another is more trivial, which is that, given the desperation to shave even ounces off of the Boxer, why no one suggests literally shaving his head and facial hair, which surely would help. The meta reason is obviously that the filmmakers didn’t want to alter Bloom’s look, but it doesn’t make sense within the story.

The third, strictly meta, is why Harney is “the Boxer.” It’s not an onscreen problem, as it’s clear when he’s being talked to or about, but it seems a needless affectation. He’s not representative of all boxers and, even when he and Boz don’t acknowledge it, he has a life and history beyond this fight. Indeed, it’s why he’s doing this at all. He’s an individual, so why try to deny it, except to make things trickier for reviewers? (Well, maybe that was the point.)

Whether or not the viewer cares about boxing, THE CUT becomes immersive as it proceeds, drawing us in as we go down its disquieting rabbit hole of contemplating what we do and why.

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