Cutter's Way

Cutter's Way (1981) is an American neo-noir you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Czech-born Ivan Passer from Newton Thornburg's 1974 novel. Jeff Bridges plays drifter Richard Bone; John Heard is the Vietnam-veteran wreck who carries the film's moral weight.

Bone's car dies in a Santa Barbara alley one night, and the next morning a girl's body turns up in a dumpster nearby. He catches a glimpse of a departing car; later, he suspects the driver was wealthy local powerbroker J.J. Cord. His friend Alex Cutter — one eye, one arm, one leg, all rage — latches onto it. Whether the identification is solid doesn't matter to Cutter: what matters is that someone powerful might finally have to answer. Lisa Eichhorn plays Bone's wife, watching both men dismantle themselves from the inside.

The film flopped on release and quietly disappeared. By the nineties it was being reassessed as one of the sharpest post-Watergate noirs Hollywood made — less interested in whodunit than in whether it even matters when the suspect has enough money. Stream Cutter's Way (1981) online on iFILM.