Rating: R | Runtime: 99 minutes
Release Date: September 5th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Republic Pictures
Director(s): Sean Ellis
Writer(s): Justin Bull / Mark Lane (novel)

There’s no ripcord on this jump.

How much does trauma weigh? That’s the central question behind Sean Ellis’ The Cut. Because it’s not just about shedding over thirty pounds in six days to qualify for his first bout in a decade. No, the Wolf of Dublin (Orlando Bloom delivering a memorable and physically committed performance) has much heavier demons than that. We saw it first-hand via an opening prologue depicting his last fight and how he went from certain victory to devastating defeat courtesy of a PTSD trigger tricking his brain into hearing a gunshot before freezing in place.

What that sound represents isn’t difficult to parse once we witness the first of many flashback memories setting the stage for an inevitable collision course between past and present. So, it’s kind of funny that it’s just never brought up. We know it haunts him. We assume his trainer/life partner Caitlin (Caitríona Balfe) knows it. Heck, even Boz the amoral fixer (John Turturro at his over-the-top best) hired by this insane comeback bid’s amoral promoter (Gary Beadle) knows it … at least enough to exploit it for his own unscrupulous purposes.

Shouldn’t confronting that pain be the movie? Shouldn’t the weight be the easy thing to conquer because everyone knows it still won’t be enough? If that prologue and the constant motif of blood pooling into Wolf’s hands (the credits label Bloom’s character solely as “Boxer” and I can’t for the life of me remember if anyone ever calls him by his actual name) means anything to us, it’s that getting in the ring is only half the battle. He must still combat the threat of another trigger and the only surefire way to do so is accepting what happened.

But that’s not what Justin Bull’s screenplay (born from a story by Mark Lane) cares about. It would rather turn a story ripe for thoughtful drama into a superficial race against time to do whatever’s necessary to get that scale to display the correct number. It would rather set-up Caitlin as an empowered woman who conquered all the misogyny that came from following her father into boxing only to have everyone else treat her like she doesn’t belong—like she’s weak for caring about Wolf’s soul. It would rather glorify toxic masculinity’s insane ambition to use self-harm to achieve an irrelevant dream than make Wolf an actual role model.

I’ve been a fan of Ellis for twenty years, ever since his debut feature Cashback, but his attempts to infuse this men’s rights movement slog of a scree with energy via some nice visual flourishes isn’t enough. Because it’s still just the story of a weak kid who took his mother’s (Clare Dunne) words about being the one who hurts rather than the one who gets hurt to heart. It’s still just a man who admits he tried to put someone else besides himself first only to realize it would never be enough. It’s still a man who pushes everyone who loves him away only to beg forgiveness after the fact and a film that lets him get away with it all.

That’s where The Cut truly lost me since I can accept all the horrible things Wolf does if it serves a purpose. If he did all this heinous stuff only to get on that scale and not be able to fight—well that’s a lesson worth taking. It would prove that love is what matters. That all this suffering born from the love he had for his mother (also a victim of misogyny) meant something. To give him the victory anyway, though? To teach him, as he has allowed himself to be taught his whole life, that the pain makes him stronger and that literally killing yourself for a fleeting victory is virtuous? No thanks.

Maybe Ellis and company think they’re using that stuff to say the opposite. Maybe they believe it’s laudable to. I don’t know. The exploitation of the IRA in those flashbacks and the constant weaponization of Wolf’s ability to inspire in the present only to have him choose the wrong path makes me think the latter because the film only ever presents true moral fortitude to spit in its face en route to depravity for depravity’s sake. And that’s fine if you want to portray a deal with the Devil bearing fruit. Don’t also make your saint so saintly that there’s zero cost. We might as well sell our souls too.

Why? Because it means nothing matters. You can’t play both sides. You can’t present consequences that render Wolf and Boz’s actions evil if you also refuse to honor them. Let them win and let it be worth it in the moment, but there must be a price if we’re meant to care. Otherwise, it’s just misogyny. It’s just meathead, anti-mental health aggression. It just questions why rules exist at all. Well, I get enough of that from reality with half the country earnestly saying “Daddy’s home” about Trump being in the White House to whip this country back into shape with his belt. It should be satire, but it’s sadly not.

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(L-R) Orlando Bloom as “Boxer” and John Turturro as “Boz” in the Psychological Thriller film, THE CUT. Photo courtesy of Republic Pictures (a Paramount Pictures label).