Cut!
Director: David Rountree
(DVD)
D-
If we are to believe the opening titles of Cut!, the indie thriller found inspiration in real-life events. Either writer/director David Rountree took no more than a fraction of a kernel of the truth or he’s planted it as a joke as the Coen brothers did with Fargo. Whichever option is correct, credibility is the picture’s largest liability, because so cockamamie are the main characters’ actions, I was unable to suspend disbelief. That crucial scripting mistake gets in the way of one’s enjoyment.
Cast as his own leading man, Rountree (Cameron Romero’s laborious Staunton Hill) plays Travis, an average Joe who toils in the film industry. Okay, so it’s just renting equipment, but what he really wants to do is direct, man!
Cut! Credibility Killer #1: Travis enlists the help of co-worker Lane (David Banks, who co-wrote and co-produced), an ex-con who purposely alienates customers to Travis’ utter annoyance, in the creation of a low-budget project.
Cut! Credibility Killer #2: Name-dropping the ROI bonanzas of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, Travis and Lane decide to make not a piece of found-footage fiction, but a dead-serious Scare Tactics-esque prank movie consisting of scenes in which they frighten unwitting prostitutes.
Cut! Credibility Killer #3: On parole and ever-psychotic, Lane convinces Travis that it’d be a good idea to give a homeless man $100 and a really sharp knife to “wave around” one of the whores. This leads to a lady of the night having no nights left to live.
But won’t that gory “accident” make for captivating cinema? Well, no. Although Rountree attempts to explain away all the motivations that simply do not jibe with basic human behavior and logic, his resolution does not work. Cut! climaxes with the kind of ludicrous, pull-the-rug exposition dump-cum-narrative twist that since 2004 has become known and ridiculed as “the Saw ending.” As if the heap of preposterousness hasn’t been piled high enough, his own Saw ending begets another Saw ending! The rubber band of rational thought broke long before.
Removed from the film, the core premise has potential; its details just need redressing. Rountree’s donning of so many hats — he also edited and produced, in addition to the three aforementioned duties — likely was a matter of necessity in bringing Cut! to fruition; ironically, in doing so he has spread himself too thin, leaving viewers with a weak plot and weaker performances, yet also a finished product that looks great. The multihyphenate has an eye for composition, but a deaf ear for dialogue.
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This random movie review escaped from the archives of Flick Attack.
