When Bone sees who he thinks is the same man in the Santa Barbara "Founder's Day Parade" – local tycoon J.J. Cord – Cutter begins to take an interest in the case.
Gurian arranged for the studio EMI to back the film financially, with Robert Mulligan to direct and Dustin Hoffman to play Alex Cutter.
Fiskin and United Artists executives screened Passer's Intimate Lighting and agreed he was the man to direct Cutter and Bone.
[3] The studio liked Jeff Bridges' work in the dailies for Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate and insisted on him for Cutter and Bone.
senior domestic sales and marketing vice president Jerry Esbin saw the film and decided that it did not have any commercial possibilities.
Ansen wrote, "Under Passer's sensitive direction, Heard gives his best film performance: he's funny and abrasive and mad, but you see the self-awareness eating him up inside.
[3] At Houston, Texas's Third International Film Festival, it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor (John Heard).
With a new ad campaign, Cutter's Way reopened in the summer of 1981 in Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York City.
Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader would later write that it was "probably Ivan Passer's best American feature...with a wonderful performance by Lisa Eichhorn and shimmering, hallucinatory cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth.
"[7] John Patterson of The Guardian called it "note-perfect" and a "masterpiece," praising all three of the lead performances while acknowledging the film required multiple viewings to perceive its strengths.
The site's consensus reads, "A suitably cynical neo-noir that echoes the disillusionment of its era, Cutter's Way relies on character-driven drama further elevated by the work of an outstanding cast".
[12]With this darker and more realistic portrayal of veterans, Passer was informing audiences of an aspect of the American experience which studios were not eager to reveal.
In other interviews, Passer even went so far as to heavily insinuate that his depiction of Cutter as a disabled and disillusioned veteran was a key reason the UA tanked the budget of the film.
[13] Even after the release of popular neo-noir movies featuring troubled Vietnam veterans—see Taxi Driver (1976) and Rolling Thunder (1977)—there was still significant resistance to showing soldiers returning home as anything other than empowered heroes.
“I’m hungry.”In many ways, Cutter’s brutal evaluation of violence and humanity reflects a larger attitude of the film that is very clearly anti-war.
Though Cutter denies that trauma is what drives him to drink—at one point he even claims “Tragedy, I take straight”—Passer shows the ghastly effects of service in Vietnam.
Not only does Cutter mentally suffer from post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but he is also physically is missing an arm, a leg, and an eye.
"[13] This introspective approach, along with both the violent ending and the complex and winding plot, in Cutter's Way are typical neo-noir staples.
For Passer, it was important that viewers understood the gloomy nature of the movie, and with the help of his cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, he attempted to remove the color blue from the film.
According to Brendan Boyle in his review of the movie in The Ringer, Cronenweth “de-emphasized blues in favor of a muted, earthy scheme that Passer acknowledged as an homage to black-and-white cinematography—a noir in color, but barely.”[17]