Cut Bank | Review

The Postman Always Dies Twice: Shakman’s Noir Infused Debut Underwhelms

Seasoned television director Matt Shakman (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) makes his narrative feature debut with Cut Bank, a rural neo-noir written by fellow television writer Robert Patino (“Sons of Anarchy”) that draws comparisons to the work of the Coen Bros. but pales considerably beyond its devious narrative. Sometimes as darkly comedic as its origins would portend, the film hits too many false notes as it chugs through several twists that don’t seem all that surprising. Set within the small town façade we’ve seen countless times before, where greed and general malcontent are barely contained beneath the superficial veneer of lip-serviced hospitality, Shakman and Patino gather the usual suspects and toss them about in the kind of impossible scam that suggests these players have never bothered to watch classic film noir.

Dwayne (Liam Hemsworth), is stuck in rural Cut Bank, Montana as he cares for sick dad, though he has dreams of taking girlfriend Cassandra (Theresa Palmer) to California whenever they get the opportunity. Meanwhile, he’s stuck working for her ornery father (Billy Bob Thornton), who seems to care little for Dwayne. One day, while filming Cassandra in a field so she can apply for some kind of local talent contest, Dwayne captures the town postman Georgie (Bruce Dern) as he’s gunned down on the side of the road. Sheriff Vogel (John Malkovich) begins to investigate. The silver lining is that Dwayne gets to pick up a sizeable cash award since anyone that can provide evidence of the killing of a federal employee is guaranteed 100,000.00. An official from D.C. representing the post office (Oliver Platt) determines a body has to be found first.

The general idea of Cut Bank starts out alright, wherein the ditzy blonde played by Theresa Palmer twirls around awkwardly in a sea of yellow flowers while an apparent cold-blooded murder takes place just behind her. But the film stumbles soon after, with Cassandra and Dwayne taking their footage to her father rather than the police, hinting at a terrifyingly strange domestic existence between her parents (pie becomes a weirdly minor motif) that never gets examined. Once John Malkovich’s mild mannered Sheriff makes an appearance, we get drudged through layers of useless exposition, with the Sheriff satisfied to ponder high school memories shared with Thornton rather than attend to the murder at hand, the town’s first. Cut Bank often gets sidetracked by a glut of useless information, meant to provide a certain depth to either the narrative or its characters, but unfortunately these moments neither seem realistic nor blithely critical of the slower, more methodical existence of these people’s lives. While David Lynch or the Coens capably provide exaggerated portraits of familiar communities in their reactions to murder, Cut Bank feels like severely watered down derivative, bogged down endlessly by pointed dialogue.

Liam Hemsworth proves to be the least of the problematic cast members, saddled with a beard that hardly makes him fit in with the Montana countryside. But anyone who’s familiar with any kind of crime film will surely find its murder mystery terribly obvious. Bruce Dern is oddly comical while Malkovich gets saddled with bits of silly dialogue (“Did he just take the Lord’s name?”). Folks like Thornton and a smarmy Oliver Platt are wasted in roles that seem thrust upon us liked jagged necessities, and Shakman instead prizes the lone wild card, a supposedly mentally handicapped individual played by A Serious Man’s Michael Stuhlbarg, who only wants the parcel that was on Georgie’s stolen postal truck, enough to kill for it. Except even Stuhlbarg is handled as a bit of repetitive schlock, with every single townsperson commenting that they thought he was dead as he cuts a swath of destruction to his prized object—after the second or third bit, it gets old. We get it.

★★/☆☆☆☆☆