Look at the talent in Cut Bank – John Malkovich, Bruce Dern, Michael Stuhlbarg, Oliver Platt, Liam Hemsworth, Teresa Palmer. And Billy Bob Thornton. Clearly great things were intended. But maybe 2014 was just too early for a revival of the gonzo Tarantino movie of yore. Ten years later movies like Cut Bank were all over the place.
Worth checking out, it’s likeable, well done and showcases Malkovich acting for a change, rather than turning in an “and featuring John Malkovich” performance, as a backwoods sheriff trying to get to the bottom of the murder of universally loved mailman Georgie Wits (Dern).
The incident was captured on camera, just by chance, by two kids with an urge to get out of Dodge and make their fortunes elsewhere. Cassandra (Palmer) was out in the fields practising her routine for the pageant queen competition – prize money $5,000 – and boyfriend Dwayne (Hemsworth) was filming her do it, just to help build her confidence, when a masked gunman suddenly appeared in the back of shot and fired two bullets into Georgie.
Things are not as they appear. There is a scam underway here, involving a reward offered by the postal service. And soon an investigator (Platt) has arrived in town, ready to hand over the money to Dwayne in exchange for his cam footage. But first a few formalities, merely routine. Oh, by the way, where is the dead man’s body?
It can never work, this scam, because no one has thought any of it through, least of all Dwayne, who is yokel dumb. Cassandra, cute as a kitten and all tits and teeth, is no Einstein either. She has no idea what’s going on, or that mailman Georgie is involved in all this. But her father, canny junkyard king Big Stan Steeley (Thornton) has an inkling something’s not right. So does the sheriff, who slowpokes about like a Columbo on a low temperature wash.
Most important of all, though only a minor detail at first, is Stuhlbarg’s Derby Milton, a taxidermist with a stutter and bottle-bottom glasses who had been expecting a delivery by the mailman. He isn’t happy to hear his parcel has disappeared with the missing mailman’s body. So off he goes, like an unglamorous John Wick, just trying to get his package and reacting extremely badly when his progress is blocked.
Add in David Burke’s Match, a member of the Blackfeet Nation who is mute, and here are our dramatis personae – Derby (unstoppable); the sheriff (vomiting at the sight of violence); the Indian (blind rages); the postal investigator (a perv); the junkyard king (high on his own self-importance. And then there’s the mailman, who simply cannot come out of this well – his continued existence is a proof of his culpability. Not one of these orbiting characters is what you’d call normal, except in the gonzo-movie sense.
In a gonzo movie things just happen, kind of by accident, like that moment in Pulp Fiction where Jules and Vincent blow a guy’s head off in the back of the car, out of nowhere. Fate is not operating according to the normal conventions and these exotic characters are the physical manifestation of a wonky causality.
This whole movie proceeds wonkily. One dumb thing leads to another and the exotics deliver their exotica while really good actors ham it up in the understated way only really good actors can pull off. Malkovich probably does it best of all, because he’s had to do this sort of thing so often. His performance is mannered and distinctive but also measured. He is making an effort to stay away from weird.
Maybe director Matt Shakman is aiming more for early Coen brothers rather than Tarantino, but he’s aiming in that general direction, towards a very 1990s sort of movie. He was born in 1975, so was 19 when Pulp Fiction came out, 21 when Fargo appeared. Whether that’s enough to say “I rest my case” or not I don’t know, but he’s done a really good job. Regardless of how well Shakman is perceived to have done with the upcoming The Fantastic Four, Cut Bank’s reputation can only increase over time.
Cut Bank – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
