Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Cut Bank Blu-ray Movie Review

Nearly-go?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 26, 2015

If the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino agreed to collaborate on a picture, but then perhaps came to creative blows sometime during the shoot, the result might be something very like Cut Bank, an intermittently engaging thriller mixing the isolated location and accruing body count of Fargo with the florid, almost twee, verbal perspicacity of a film like Pulp Fiction. The Fargo reference is perhaps particularly apt, not just due to some plot similarities and an overall likeness in tone, but also because director Matt Shakman has worked on the Fargo television series and has engaged the show’s co-stars Billy Bob Thornton and Oliver Platt to appear here. The main thrust of the plot concerns strapping young Dwayne McLaren (Liam Hemsworth, looking like he’s passing a whole slew of kidney stones throughout the film), a kid who is sick of living in the stultifying confines of Cut Bank, Montana, the supposed “coldest place in the nation.” Out in an impossibly scenic field one day with his pretty girlfriend Cassandra (Teresa Palmer), Dwayne pulls out a home video camera to capture Cassandra rehearsing for an upcoming beauty pageant which may provide the pair with a little nest egg to aid in their attempts to get the heck out of Dodge (and/or Cut Bank). In a perhaps winking reference to outings like Blow-Up, Dwayne instead manages to catch a horrifying murder that takes place in the background. That in turn sets a whole cartwheeling series of events into motion which, in true Fargo style, results in a rather gruesome body count and a number of once hidden intrigues which slowly but surely burst into the cold (coldest?) light of day.

Cut Bank actually begins with a sequence devoted to local mailman Georgie Wits (Bruce Dern), a guy who in this film’s overly pretentious fashion is almost always referred to as “Mr. Georgie Wits,” at least by the local postmistress, the similarly titled Mrs. Margaret (Joyce Robbins). Georgie seems like a crusty old guy, not especially possessed of a “bedside manner,” or whatever the analogous courtly demeanor might be for a mailman, and he's also a bit of a dirty old man, as his proclivity to spy on the local cheerleading team aptly proves. Georgie turns out to be the victim of the heinous shooting Dwayne captures on tape, and it also turns out that according to Sheriff Vogel (John Malkovich), a character who insists everyone call him “Sheriff Vogel” at all times, this is the first murder that Cut Bank has ever experienced. It won’t be the last.

A probably too over convoluted intersection of competing subplots also involve Dwayne’s boss (and Cassandra’s father) Big Stan Steeley (Billy Bob Thornton), who runs a couple of automotive repair lots and who has an obvious if curiously underdeveloped history with Sheriff Vogel. Another late breaking history between two characters involves Dwayne’s incapacitated father, a wheelchair and oxygen tube encumbered elder for whom Dwayne cares, and the character who turns out to be the lynch pin (spelled that way for a reason) around whom much of the plot revolves, local recluse taxidermist (is there any other kind?), Derby Milton (Michael Stuhlbarg, creepily excellent). While Sheriff Vogel stumbles and bumbles through the murder investigation, one which soon includes at least one other body, good ol’ Derby, who is distraught that a package he was expecting has gone missing after Georgie’s murder and the subsequent disappearance of his mail truck, simply puts on his “thinking” ball cap and pretty much solves the mystery single handed, dispatching a series of people along the way, leaving the poor sheriff to arrive at various crime scenes a few minutes too late.

There’s quite a bit to like in Cut Bank, including some showy but fun performances by the likes of Dern (who shall we say sticks around after that opening sequence) and Oliver Platt, playing a distracted postal inspector who shows up to confirm the facts of the case and facilitate a handsome reward to Dwayne for having caught the murder on videotape. Thornton and Malkovich are also effective, albeit in somewhat more tamped down roles. But screenwriter Roberto Patino tips his hand way too early with a reveal that offers a supposedly surprising denouement involving the ins and outs of the killing and its happenstance capture on video (this is really not much of a spoiler, as the film gets to it rather quickly in the overall scheme of things).

Cut Bank does show some signs of having been tinkered with at some point, for there are an undue number of unexplored story points that are at least mentioned but never really fully detailed or explained. We’re left to pretty much ferret out the backstory involving Sheriff Vogel and Big Stan, one that evidently involved a woman named Celine, and are similarly left to wonder exactly what’s going on with the possibly psychopathic Derby, a guy who perhaps isn’t only stuffing animals and whose "special project" in the basement is in need of some serious exposition. Why do all the other townspeople keep mentioning they thought Derby was dead once they bump into him? This is a recurring "gag" in the film which never lands because the audience is never given any context to place it into. In what is perhaps yet another cinematic reference, this time to Kiss Me Deadly, that “parcel” that Derby is so obsessed with retrieving appears to be the MacGuffin propelling the plot forward, but it's the mere artifact itself and not what's inside that seems to be the key.

There are a couple of very strong scenes in Cut Bank, including a fantastic showdown between Dern and Stuhlbarg and a nice Hitchcockian moment when Hemsworth desperately is trying to call a cohort, perhaps getting ready to leave an incriminating message on an answering machine, at exactly the same moment the good Sheriff turns up at the guy's house to interview him. Some of the other sidebars, like the bizarre Miss Cut Bank Pageant, seem to be there only to provide a bit of "local color."

Cut Bank Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cut Bank is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Shot on film with the Arricam LT, Cut Bank, though not very long and not in competition for disc real estate with an unwieldy amount of supplements, may have done better with a bit more breathing room, for there are some minor but nagging issues with compression in some of the film's many dark sequences. Out in the bright sunlight, and especially in some of the nice scenes in the huge, yellow flower filled, meadow, colors pop agreeably well and detail is excellent. Depth of field is also commendable in many of these scenes. Even some dimly lit sequences can provide good to very good fine detail (see screenshot 8). A couple of scenes have been moderately color graded (see screenshot 2), but detail and fine detail are generally pleasing.

Cut Bank Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cut Bank features a nicely spacious DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which provides good support for the film's oudoor locales, neatly establishing aural depth with well placed ambient environmental sounds, while also prioritizing dialogue. All spoken elements are clearly and cleanly presented, and the film's score, which utilizes some source cues like Hank Williams, Jr.'s ode to the titular Montana town, sounds fine on this problem free track.

Cut Bank Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Matt Shakman and Writer Roberto Patino. This is a generally very amiable commentary and it does manage to fill in a few missing pieces (jigsaw puzzle or otherwise) that the finished film doesn't do a great job of elucidating.


• Bad Karma: Life in Cut Bank (1080p; 18:52) is a fairly rote EPK with okay interviews with the cast and crew.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 3:36) look like they're sourced from raw video and play with a timecode caption.


• Extended Scenes (1080p; 2:03) also play with a timecode caption.

Cut Bank Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cut Bank is obviously derivative, and it never quite recovers from spilling its veritable beans too early in the overall arc of the story, but there are several quite compelling elements here, not the least of which is Bruce Dern's completely gonzo take on Georgie Wits, a guy who has most definitely "gone postal," though perhaps not in the way typically assumed. Occasionally fun and more than occasionally a bit gruesome, Cut Bank is certainly no Fargo, but it does go a bit, anyway. Technical merits are very good to excellent, and with caveats noted, Cut Bank comes Recommended.