Cutter's Way (1981)

Alex Cutter (Heard) came back from war minus an eye, a leg, and an arm and mad as hell. He lacks direction, drinks too much, and abuses his wife (Eichhorn). One night his friend Richard Bone (Bridges) witnesses someone dumping something in an alley; it turns out to be the body of a young girl. When Cutter hears about it, he embarks on a crusade to expose the killer, enlisting the help of the murdered girl's sister. Bone reluctantly joins them. Are they right or are they in search of their white whale?

As Mr. Fuller incorporates Cologne’s carnival revelry, Mr. Passer seizes on the surreal facade of the Old Spanish Days celebration in Santa Barbara, Calif. Rather than a salute to local history, the fiesta feels like a cover-up of fat-cat malfeasance. Jordan Cronenweth’s magic-hour cinematography distills the golden California sunlight into an atmosphere of malign ripeness. The movie’s gimlet-eyed mise-en-scène is exceeded only by the flamboyance of John Heard’s career performance as a raspy-voiced madman who lost an arm, a leg, an eye and possibly his mind in Vietnam.

Mr. Heard’s furious pinwheel of resentment is supported, if not stabilized, by Lisa Eichhorn’s self-effacing portrayal of his alcoholic wife and Jeff Bridges’s turn as their self-loathing best friend, an unenthusiastic boat salesman who moonlights as a penny-ante gigolo. The three might as well be occupying Santa Barbara as if it were Zuccotti Park.

Once intended as a vehicle for Dustin Hoffman, “Cutter’s Way” was a casualty of “Heaven’s Gate,” a costly Michael Cimino western blamed for fatally damaging its studio, United Artists. Mr. Passer’s budget was cut, and once his supporters at United Artists left, his film — originally titled “Cutter and Bone” — was dumped into release with only two hastily scheduled previews and minimal publicity. Panned by three New York City dailies as well as by local TV, the movie was yanked from theaters before the favorable notices from the weeklies arrived.