Cut Bank is a movie you’re likely to see after its film festival run, since it has an A-list cast and easily marketable plot. It’s a really well written and well done version of the post-Coen Brothers quirky crime drama we saw a lot of in the’ 90s. It’s even one of the best ones. Really, the only thing holding me back from unequivocal praise is the fact that I’ve seen a lot of these by now, but that may be my own problem. If you love a genre and you make the best one ever, why shouldn’t it get high praise?
Cut Bank, MT youth Dwayne McLaren captures a murder on video when he’s filming his girlfriend Cassandra (Teresa Palmer) performing in the fields. The murder of a postal worker qualifies Dwayne for a reward that could get him and Cassandra out of Cut Bank, but the crime is not what it seems. Sheriff Vogel (John Malkovich) and Cassandra’s father Big Stan (Billy Bob Thornton) are on the case, but the biggest wild card is town recluse Derby Milton, (Michael Stuhlbarg) who is waiting for a package that was held up by the postman murder.
This is very Fargo with the unlikely character undoing the perfect crime. What’s more unlikely than a pregnant cop? How about a hermit taxidermist? As he investigates, the film trusts us to see Derby piece together the clues without explaining them to us. He encounters several more quirky characters too, including a mute Native American whose note pad creates a unique form of cinematic dialogue.
The audience gets to piece together the criminal plot on our own as characters reveal their involvement, we catch on to the extent of the mail fraud, and the very murder weapons present themselves along with the red herrings. You feel for the criminals too when they find themselves in tight spots. It’s like Malkovich dropping the bullet in In the Line of Fire. You don’t want him to succeed in killing the president, but you know he has to reach down and grab that bullet before anyone sees it.
The dialogue has its own style too. It’s not a funny accent so much as a unique choice of words. “I thought you were the God forbid,” for example, or Vogel’s reaction to the first murder he’s ever seen on the job. Frankly, it’s far less obtrusive than it might have been in Fargo. It’s just unique enough so you know that Cut Bank, MT is a unique little world of its own.
Cut Bank does some of the same things as all the quirky crime dramas do. There’s a surprise accidental death, though thank God it’s not another character accidentally shooting himself in the head again. We also get treated to Foley sound effects of Oliver Platt eating cobbler. Dude, we do not need to hear people’s eating sounds. Oddly, there’s another scene where a dead body is played by a live actor holding still, only you can totally tell it’s not really still.
Overall though, Cut Bank is well told with a different twist. It’s just the same genre. All of these stories are about how petty criminals don’t anticipate the consequences of their “perfect” plans, but if they were that insightful, they wouldn’t turn to crime in the first place.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
