Review: Cut Bank

Small towns offer many pleasures, chief of which is the comfort of a community where everybody knows your name, or at least your face. That comfort can also be a confinement as young lovers Dwayne (Liam Hemsworth) and Cassandra (Teresa Palmer) can attest. He's itching to get out, but does not seem to have the means or ambition until he inadvertently captures a murder amidst the wheat and canola fields of Cut Bank, Montana.

Any evidence regarding the unlawful killing of any government officer or employee leads to a 100K reward, which Dwayne's video is sure to net him since the murder victim was mailman Georgie Wits (a frisky Bruce Dern). The mailman's murder is not as cut and dry as Sheriff Vogel (a dialed-down John Malkovich) would like. Averse to violence, Vogel can barely stomach the first murder this sleepy little town has ever seen much less the succession of bodies added to the heap.

The murder perturbs many of the townsfolk, none more so than Derby Milton (Michael Stuhlbarg), a taxidermist so reclusive that everyone he encounters remarks on his not being dead. Evidently, the fact that he is alive is more noteworthy than his all-but-advertised capacity for killing people who refuse to disclose the whereabouts of a parcel that was in the victim's mail truck. Greasy of hair, grimy of fingernail, stuttering of speech, and lumbering of gait, Derby is part Michael Meyers, part Anton Chigurh, and part Karl Childers (Mr. Sling Blade himself, Billy Bob Thornton, co-stars as Cassandra's father) - a breed of killer that can elicit both laughter and chills. Stuhlbarg manages to overcome the unnecessary peculiarities burdened on Derby to convey a menace all the more unsettling for its comportment of calm.

Stuhlbarg, Malkovich, Dern, Thorton, and Oliver Platt (as the postal investigator investigating Dwayne's claim) are all reason enough to give Cut Bank a gander. Screenwriter Richard Patino's script, with its twists and turns of plot and occasional quirky flourishes of dialogue, must have been an enticing prospect to these talents. Matt Shakman directed the season one finale of FX's Fargo, which should have informed his approach for this similar slice of idiosyncratic noir. None of the control or flair displayed in that Fargo episode is present in Cut Bank's by-the-numbers execution.

Most damagingly, Hemsworth and, to a lesser degree, Palmer are simply not equipped to convey the emotional turmoil caused by the almost karmic misfortune that befalls the couple. Small town morality tales are often like Greek tragedies - there is always a steep price to pay for compromising one's sense of right and wrong. Palmer is saddled with a ridiculously inane character, which she can at least blame upon Patino. Hemsworth, who has the heaviest load to carry, has no such excuses.

Hemsworth is a strapping and handsome young man but, as an actor, he draws from a dry well. At no point does he embody the emotions required by the circumstances. The same expression used for dropping off the video at the post office is the same one deployed for the scene when he realises just how out of control his situation has become. The famed wit Dorothy Parker once insulted Katharine Hepburn by noting her performance had "run the gamut of emotions from A to B." Would that Hemsworth was even in the vicinity of that gamut.

Cut Bank

Directed by: Matt Shakman

Written by: Richard Patino

Starring: Liam Hemsworth, Teresa Palmer, Bruce Dern, John Malkovich, Oliver Platt, Michael Stuhlbarg, Billy Bob Thornton