TIFF Review: ‘The Cut’

I never really know whether Toronto International Film Festival audiences attend gala premieres for the films or the celebrities. Perhaps both, but it really feels like it’s more for the latter. There was a hubbub and excited buzz in the capacious audience of the Princess of Wales theatre as Orlando Bloom and his partner (the internet tells me that it’s none other than Katy Perry but all I glimpsed was the back of her head) took their seats for the world premiere of Sean Ellis‘ new boxing movie, The Cut.

The Princess of Wales normally puts on pricey musicals. During TIFF, though, it and a bunch of theatres in the downtown Toronto area get taken over by the festival. In 2024, TIFF began this past Thursday and outside the theatre, throngs of people stood behind barricades waiting to spot celebrities.

The film itself feels very much like an abrupt turn for Bloom, who plays an Irish boxer (I’m not sure if he’s ever given a name) that messed up his big title shot in Vegas. We see him years later enduring humiliation, operating a run-down boxing gym with his partner Caitlin (Caitriona Balfe) while the local teenagers treat him like dirt. The grime in their struggling gym extends throughout the whole film — a sickly and gristly emotional thread — though most of it takes place in Vegas. We don’t see the bright lights or glitz that normally accompany that locale, however. Contrasted with the lights and the people outside the theatre, the film is made up of claustrophobically tight shots and a dour colour palette. Nor is this a typical boxing movie. It’s sort of like an Irish cross between Raging Bull and Whiplash.

The latter film is the more apt comparison as the heart of The Cut is about the punishing and messed up relationship between Bloom’s character and a relentlessly sociopathic trainer named Boz (John Turturro) during the week leading up to the boxer’s comeback fight in Vegas. At first, you think the movie might be a more typical underdog/comeback sports tale, but it soon spins away from that template. It’s a grim and troubling study of an individual who’s adapted to the traumas in his life by repressing them, by encountering abuse after abuse, seeking ever worsening levels of pain. We see these traumas in the black and white flashbacks to the boxer’s childhood during the Troubles in Ireland; the first instigator being his mother, but also in the way Caitlin talks to him (there’s love there but little tenderness). The pain and sickness take on a whole new level during the boxer’s training sessions with Boz.

Turturro brings an electricity and life to the movie that’s lacking in the chemistry between the boxer and Caitlin, not to mention the flashbacks to the boxer’s childhood. Turturro is schooled in a certain kind of acting, he came of age in a time when the harsh social realism and method flavour in American movies hadn’t given way yet to a slickness which made that older spontaneity hard to reproduce. It feels as if Bloom is pulling away from the fey swashbuckling adventurer roles that defined his earlier career, but since he’s playing a husk of a man without understanding how to hit those deeper levels, our engagement with his character is also skin deep. It doesn’t help that his affected Irish accent is near unintelligible. On the other hand, it’s nice to see Balfe play a less glamorous role (she’s almost as seedy and worn down as Bloom) and they’re both playing characters who aren’t so young anymore but they’re forcing it.

Ellis isn’t subtle either with his themes, subject matter, or filmmaking but that isn’t to say that the film fails to go to some interesting places. I found the boxer’s bulimia interesting, especially as it relates to male weight loss and body image in this context.

After the film, there was a Q&A. Bloom and Ellis were brought out on stage, as were Balfe, Turturro, Ed Kear, and screenwriter Justin Bull. However, it was Bloom who nervously/excitedly answered most of the questions, once again signalling that this performance was an important one for him, perhaps holding hopes it will inject new blood into his career. He said that this was his first time seeing the film on the big screen and that he didn’t realize until deep in the process that, in a twisted way, it’s a love story of sorts about the relationship between the boxer and Boz. Turturro corroborated this, saying that even when people use each other, there can be a love there and that an old teacher of his told him you can essentially approach any scene like a love scene. I would have liked to hear more from Turturro or Balfe — who hardly spoke and simply looked stunning in her black dress, a far cry from the sweatshirts and lack of makeup exhibited by her character on screen. However, it didn’t matter to the audience who dutifully cheered for the film as well as the stars. That seems to be the recipe for these galas: a little bit of glitz and glamour without too much of an in-depth interview goes a long way towards giving TIFF audiences what they want, making every premiere an excitable event.