The Cut Film Review: Making the Weight

Sean Ellis’ The Cut is an intense and emotionally devastating boxing drama featuring a stellar performance by Orlando Bloom.

The film starts with a brief prologue in which we see a lightweight Irish boxer (who surprisingly goes unnamed throughout the entire movie) in his prime, played by Bloom, losing a Title Fight in Las Vegas. Just when he’s about to knock-out his opponent, something distracts him; something only he can hear or perceive, and that unfortunately results in him getting hit in the stomach and getting a nasty cut on his brow. After that, we never actually see him fight again.

Ten years later, The Boxer owns a gym with his wife, Caitlin (Caitriona Balfe, of popular TV series Outlander), and is dedicated to training younger and sometimes more aggressive athletes. But when millionaire businessman Donny (Gary Beadle, of the Gentlemen streaming show) arrives with an unexpected proposal, he can’t refuse it. Thus, he goes back to Las Vegas with Caitlin and assistant Manny (Ed Kear) in order to get into one last big bout. There’s a catch, though: in order to fight, he needs to lose more than thirty pounds (or eleven kilos) in two weeks. And when Caitlin’s training and diet doesn’t seem to do the trick, he resorts to working with no-nonsense Boz (John Turturro), who pushes him to the edge. The problem is, the latter doesn’t care about him the same way as the former, which results in a punishing and sometimes even cruel regimen.

If The Cut is, well, a cut above most other boxing features, it’s because it doesn’t focus on the fighting or Rocky-style training montages. The movie isn’t about being the best, defeating worthy opponents, or proving oneself. It’s about how far a beaten-down man can go in order to achieve something he should have achieved years before, and the cruelty athletes can be subjected to by remorseless and amoral men. Thus, The Cut doesn’t seem to be interested in The Boxer’s final fight; the film is all about the journey and not the destination, and what an emotional and torturous journey it is.

We see The Boxer trying to eat fewer carbs and do as much cardio as possible. We then see him eat less and sweat more, going to a sauna pretty much every day. We see him training in a gym, and we see him craving food, even going as far as eating and then going to the loo to puke it all out (it is heavily implied he has been suffering from bulimia for years). And when he starts working with Boz, we see him take drugs, lose blood, and do pretty much everything that can be done to lose weight. As Boz says in a particularly poignant scene, he doesn’t believe in The Boxer; he believes in winning and thus is capable of doing anything and everything in order to achieve said win.

Refreshingly, The Cut doesn’t try to develop any sort of relationship between the monstrous Boz and the vulnerable Boxer. The former only appears whenever he has to torture the latter so he can “make the weight”. The rest of the time, our protagonist is either with his wife or with assistant Manny, and eventually, by himself. Caitlin doesn’t want to see her husband suffer, so at a certain point, she decides to disappear. She knows The Boxer needs to do everything in his power to be accepted in the fight, but she doesn’t want to be a part of it. The relationship between these characters isn’t portrayed melodramatically, but rather realistically, making it clear that they’re both husband and wife, and trainer and trainee.

Orlando Bloom is simply magnetic as The Boxer. I’ve never thought of him as a particularly ingenious thespian; although he’s had interesting turns in films like Kingdom of Heaven or Ned Kelly, he never struck me as having a lot of range. Here, though, he shows that he’s capable of giving a three-dimensional and heartbreaking performance, turning The Boxer into a shell of a man who doesn’t mind being mistreated and manipulated by others in order to achieve something. He transforms his body but also his mannerisms, which allows The Cut to feel appropriately tragic. Of the secondary characters, Caitriona Balfe’s Caitlin (gentle, smart) and John Tuturro’s Boz (unscrupulous, fiendish) stand out.

I didn’t know what to expect from The Cut, but it certainly wasn’t what Sean Ellis’ film eventually conveys. This is an emotionally potent and sometimes difficult-to-watch experience, shot with expertise, even if the occasional flashbacks to The Boxer’s childhood in Troubles-torn Ireland don’t really connect. In fact, said scenes (presented almost like recollections) only try to literalise what is evident in the subtext, and of course, in Bloom’s excellent performance. But even if the movie’s structure is not totally sound, the end result is surprising, poignant and visually stimulating. The Cut might not be for everyone, but if you give it a chance, you might not regret going into this particular fight.

The Cut will be released in U.S. theaters, in U.K. & Irish cinemas, and globally in theatres on September 5, 2025.