Shuji (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a young cinephile that hates the current state of the film industry. During one of his classic film screenings, two Yakuza thugs come in and ask Shuji to meet their boss. Upon arrival, Shuji discovers that his brother has been killed due to a debt he couldn’t pay. Apparently, the money was borrowed so that Shuji could make his films. Now with his brother dead, the Yakuza expect Shuji to pay back the debt. With only 10 days to accomplish this task, Shuji decides that he will become a human punching bag for frustrated Yakuza. For a few thousand Yen per punch, Shuji will let them hit his abs as hard as they can. As the days go by, Shuji, a cute bartender named Yoko (Takako Tokiwa), and an old Yakuza vet named Hiroshi (Takeshi Sasano) help up the ante and collect the money for Shuji, but the question remains, will Shuji make back all the money?
Directed by the Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi, Cut is a movie with a message and a purpose. Though you can definitely tell that this was a Japanese movie made by an outsider, Naderi has done a wonderful job of capturing the detail and systematic spirit that encompasses Japanese filmmaking. Additionally, the visual layout of the film is beautiful; it shifts between gritty and clean which you don’t see often and something Naderi deserves to be commended on.
My favorite scene was when Shuji auctions off his face and bets that he can take 100 punches. The cool part was that in order to survive the barrage of punches, he lists off the top 100 films that he considers to be the classics. Though it takes awhile to count down to number one, it’s fun to see what he considers the best as it’s something that’ll play really well to the art house crowd.
Hidetoshi Nishijima gave an excellent performance as Shuji, capturing all the necessary passion a film advocate should have while also finding a way to use that passion to fuel his insanity when taking his daily beatings. Though his performance was good, I really enjoyed watching Takako Tokiwa. She gave a very touching performance as Yoko, Shuji’s mild mannered love interest. Her performance was sincere and careful, never being forward with Shuji and always aware of the Yakuza around her. Without much dialogue, she was able to convey a broad range of emotions that captured my heart.
Though I give it some praise, Cut isn’t without its flaws, namely that it’s overly preachy about “entertaining” aka crappy cinema, that it’s repetitive, and it’s inaccurate portrayal of facial injuries. Shuji is a guy who wants to spread word of the artful classics and so in order to give himself strength as he’s being punched, he yells things like “shit films” and “cinema is not a whore,” but eventually his yelling gets overbearing. We get the point, a lot of today’s cinema is shit but this isn’t going to fix it, screening classics on your roof is a step in the right direction for an activist.
As for the repetition, Shuji is given 10 days to make the Big Boss’ money back, so we follow Shuji over that period of 
time as he gets his ass kicked. But that’s not the issue; the issue is that most of those scenes last for five, maybe 10 minutes. Multiply that by 10 days and that’s 50 to 100 minutes of watching a guy getting beat up. The film comes in at 120 minutes but it doesn’t need to be that long to get its message clearly across.
When it comes to the facial injuries, in most circumstances I’d never even mention this, but because this movie was coming off as a letter to people about the dying art of cinema and was trying to be as down to earth as possible, I have no choice. When someone takes 50+ punches to the face, don’t you think something would break? Like a nose or a jaw? Only in the final scene does Shuji experience disorientation and that’s the closest thing we get to an injury. It was a tad frustrating.
Overall, Cut is a passionate and poetic film with a fascinating and rather unique premise. Its downfall is its eventual disregard for realism and its 132 minute duration, which results in a lot of repetition, but don’t let that deter you from seeing the film as it’s a passionate ode to the dying art of entertaining AND artistic cinema.
Rating: Perfect for those who champion the classics and those who like a cool premise (6.3/10)
Cut is part of the Viewpoints program and can been seen on the following days:
Monday April 23rd at 9:00 pm at the Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 7
Thursday April 26th at 6:30 pm at the Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 6
Friday April 27th at 10:00 pm at the Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 5
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