Actors have long been willing to put themselves in harms way for their craft. weight gain and loss has been right at the top of this, with actors bouncing all around the scale in hopes of earning critical praise. For an actor like Orlando Bloom, whose career is teetering on relevancy, and has never been nominated for an Oscar, I’m sure he saw the Cut as a quick fix to that. He lost 52 pounds for the role. It isn’t quite the 62 pounds Christian Bale lost for the Machinist, but perhaps still more dangerous. Bale didn’t have to play a boxer. Bloom had to drop a ton of weight, and also subject himself to fight choreography in the ring. And not a single person has thought about nominating him for this.

Sean Ellis directed this psychological thriller about how far one man is willing to go, and it certainly is not a happy watch. It does become a showcase for Bloom, who was also surprisingly good earlier this year in Deep Cover. In this film, he plays a boxer that suffers a loss at the top of the film, and struggles to find his footing again. it isn’t until a fight comes knocking that he really starts to hone in on his craft again.The problem is, in my opinion, he’s boxing outside his weight class, and trying to drop an absurd amount of weight in a short period of time. At first, his training is fairly safe as his girlfriend (Balfe) is helping to oversee the process. but when it becomes clear he can’t lose the weight, he seeks out expert advice on what to do to get to the fighting weight. Enter a shady boxing guru (John tuturro), who might as well be the devil, since he works Bloom to the bone. Any possible way he can think of to get Bloom down by an ounce, he’ll do, which puts Bloom in a fugue state where he’s open to any and all suggestions. Eventually this puts a strain on his relationship, and it becomes just him and the devil he doesn’t know.

It’s not really a horror film, but it kind of is the same way The machinist was. Near the end of the film, when this boxer has seemingly nothing left to give, he finds that one more thing to give that is deeply troubling and unnerving, which flips this from a psychological thriller into borderline horror. Orlando Bloom really is giving all he’s got here, and tuturro is always a great villain, but the plot around them makes no sense. Why wouldn’t he box in his weight class? losing that much weight means losing muscle mass, and the film never really establishes his true desperation to need this once specific fight.

the movie also does a poor job of making any relationship between bloom and Balfe feel anything more than they just met five minutes ago. She is trying to milk something out of the emotional toil it takes on her, but really there isn’t anything there. It’s not a bad performance, just one not supported by the film. However, much like the Machinist, it does turn into this commanding trial for bloom, who is actually subjecting himself to this weight loss, and giving all of himself as an actor. It’s his performance that pushes this film into the fresh zone, because as hard as he’s working to get some critical accolades here, I can’t deny him. This is his revenant.

The audio description wasn’t claimed by anyone at the end, which was weird. It wasn’t a bad track, so I’m not sure why no one decided to credit themselves.

In a world full of boxing dramas, the best, and possibly only reason to watch the Cut is that it might be Orlando Bloom’s best work ever. So I guess you could say it just barely made the cut.

Fresh: 6.2/10