CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: The Cutter (2005)

By 2005, Chuck Norris was too old for this shit. “Walker, Texas Ranger” ended in 2001, after a nine season run that is frankly hard to believe. A mere four years later, there was an attempt to relaunch the show as a series of TV movies that did not get beyond the first installment. Chuck was well into the twilight of his career, doing shit like founding a short-lived fighting league, putting his name on books, and getting ironic cameos in big comedies. This was right before the internet turned him into a meme, signaling that he was truly a jokey relic of the past. The former Lone Wolf would basically retire after that... But not before starring in one more crappy, direct-to-video action movie. The story behind “The Cutter” is interesting but not that interesting. The film spent a decade in development before ending up at Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millennium Films. One presumes this is how the story of a diamond cutter who survived the Holocaust got transformed into a low budget Chuck Norris vehicle. It would, for many years, be the final starring role for the once Karate Champ. 

In the Sinai dessert, an archaeological team uncovers the mythical, bejeweled Breastplate of Aaron. Shortly afterwards, a man lands in a private glider, kills the dig team, and steals the holy relic. Meanwhile, in Spokane, Washington... John Shepherd is a private detective who specializes in finding missing people and rescuing kidnapped individuals. After a botched rescue attempt of a teenage girl results in her death, he feels immense guilt. Through a series of encounters, he makes the acquitance of Elizabeth Teller. She is the granddaughter of Isaac Teller, a Jewish jeweler and Holocaust survivor. While imprisoned in the camps, he was forced by Nazi officers to design a new gemstone cut formation. Now, decades later, the last surviving officer at the camp and his younger associate, the murderer from earlier, captured Isaac and demands he cut the twelve fabled stones of Aaron. Shepherd and his team are on the case. 

"The Cutter" is, from most perspectives, a fairly shoddy motion picture. Chuck's "Hero and the Terror" director Bill Tannen came back for this one. While Tannen's career isn't the most prestigious, he was still an industry veteran directing his tenth feature here. Despite that, an aura of cheapness floats over all of "The Cutter." I mean, how many action movies can you think of set in Spokane, Washington? Many scenes seem to take place in unassuming homes, apartments, and buildings. The climatic moment happens in a single room, a generic warehouse setting, while another prominent fight occurs at the back of a city bus. The film features some extremely annoying editing, indicative of the early 2000s, with many sped-up montages  in-between scenes set to fast paced music. There are whooshing sound effects, frantic cuts, and shifts between color and black-and-white. It feels like a desperate attempt to make a low budget and unambitious project seem much more trendy and stylish than it otherwise obviously is. The film ends on a literal freeze-frame shot, like the old TV shows it actually has much more in-common with than "2 Fast 2 Furious." 

"The Cutter's" low budget cheesiness veers towards unintentional hilarity very quickly. The aged jewels of brilliant color and clarity that the plot revolves around look a lot more like plastic toys. The sound design is amusingly cheap, every firearm making one of two different gunshot sounds. The first proper fight ends with the hysterical sight of a guy launched through a window and doing the Howie Scream, a stock sound effect rendered hilarious by both its instant recognition and tendency to seem out-of-place in any context. Inevitably, you quickly notice that this melee filled shoot-em-up seems to revolve around mostly older people. The title character is a Holocaust survivor who can't be any younger than eighty. (Performed by, of all people, Bernie Kopell.) The secret final boss of the movie is a similarly ancient man, played by actual Holocaust survivor and long tenured character actor Curt Lowens. The leading lady has grey hair but still gets a sexy shower scene, making me wonder if "The Cutter" was specifically made with the AARP crowd in mind. 

No old guy is more prominent in "The Cutter" than Chuck Norris, who would've been about sixty-four at the time of filming. His action scenes seem to involve a lot of him mostly standing stationary, punching or shooting at someone right in front of him. The bigger stunts he does do, like jabbing an attacker in the temples or rolling over a stone wall, look awkward. He is often replaced by a stunt double wearing a noticeable wig whenever the story requires him to kick higher than his hip or fall backwards. We aren't quite in Charles Bronson in "Death Wish V" levels of embarrassment here but the disconnect between the star's age and the expectations of the action genre are still unavoidable. Chuck spends a lot of this one sitting down, drinking tea, talking on the phone, or displaying an inexplicable knowledge of Biblical history.  A car chase amusingly features him only in quick cuts, clearly not actually behind the wheel of a speeding automobile. The climax, once again, has him disarming a bomb rather than delivering a killing blow. Probably the most unfortunate moment occurs during his trademark shirtless scene, his once taunt and muscled arms looking rather skinny and his famous manly chest now peppered with liver spots. 

While "The Cutter" is definitely a Chuck Norris vehicle, in the tradition of many geezer teasers to come, it does feature a younger actor in an equally big role. That would be Daniel Bernhardt, the man you get when your action movie is too shitty for even Jean-Claude Van Damme's lax standards. Bernhardt is the bad guy, a good use of his talents. He gets to put on a variety of different accents, sneers villainously at his opponents, and wears a number of disguises. Including, most incongruously, a kippah. Bernhardt hams it up nicely, enlivening an otherwise listless production. In fact, if you watch a lot of crappy action movies, there are a number of people here you'll recognize. Norris regular Marshall R. Teague is his contact on the police force. Chuck's brother Aaron has a bit part, getting to unexpectedly thrown out some fast punches of his own.  Tracy Scoggins has some belligerent sexual tension with Chuck in a few scenes. Former American Gladiator Deron McBee gets karate chopped in the throat. How much value a movie making you say "Hey, I know that guy!" when some mildly recognizable character actor walks on-screen is debatable but it further brightens up "The Cutter." 

Another kind of familiar face is Todd Jensen, a regular in movies made by Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millennium Films slop factory. Lerner's fingerprints are on the film in another way. Having picked up the baton left by Golan and Globus, Lerner is also an Israeli nationalist whose low budget action schlock doubles as white-and-blue propaganda. "The Cutter" is not quite as blatant as "The Delta Force" but, like earlier Nu Image production "The Order," it does take the Exodus myth as historical fact. Having the Breastplate of Aaron be the main MacGuffin and Nazis be the bad guys make me wonder if this was, at one point in its long development history, another "Indiana Jones" rip-off. But Nazis always make good villains, the film's backstory of the Holocaust only seeming odd because it was made and ostensibly set in 2005. This is not a Zionist screed. It's a standard Nu Image, in the other way: Being really cheap and kind of bad. However, watching a senior citizen action star fumble through familiar beats while surrounded by enough funny, intentional or otherwise, moments and one or two Guys I Like doesn't make me regret watching it. [6/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 3 outta 5]

[X] Facial Hair

[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall

[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face

[X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest

[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup