Gorgeous guy in a film that turns all your cliched expectations on their respective ears? What’s not to love in the 2014 film, Cut Snake? Still I admit that the only reason I oh-so-thankfully watched it to the end was because I was stuck in a situation where I didn’t have anything else to watch. Otherwise, I would have bailed, anticipating throughout that its stark brutality wasn’t worth the inevitable end (that did not, in fact, take place).
I should say here that I’m not at all squeamish about brutality. On the other hand, I’m no fan of horror and therefore no fan of brutality “just for the fun of it,” if it seems otherwise pointless in a predictable plot. But Cut Snake blindsided me, in a good way and an important way…exploring with unsentimental yet touching candor the mistakes in the conventional lines we draw between good and bad.
I’ll say no more, not wanting to give too much away. But I strongly encourage you to ignore its unfavorable ratings (based, I suspect, on the opinions of people who didn’t watch it through to the end) and give Cut Snake the chance that I, at least, feel it deserves.
Per IMDb:
An ex-convict is trying to make a new life for himself in a new city. But his new life is challenged when his foreboding and charismatic former cell mate arrives in town.
Best Original Screenplay nomination from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.
“Sullivan Stapleton is memorable as the mesmerisingly erratic and dangerously angry ex-con Pommie in Tony Ayres’s 1970s-set neo noir drama.” “The film’s title refers to the Australian colloquialism ‘mad as a cut snake’…” Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian
