A lot of talk has surrounded In the Cut due to the many scenes of nudity Meg Ryan offers up, but that isn’t even remotely enough to turn this movie into a production worth talking about.
In the Cut is toted as a modern crime story that is more of a love story gone bad.
Frannie Avery (Ryan) is a sexually starved writing teacher that becomes involved with Detective Malloy (Ruffalo) a homicide detective investigating a murder in her neighborhood.
Encouraged by her half-sister Pauline (Jason Leigh) she decides to see where the relationship goes, if you can call it that.
As sex drives this relationship the attention that should be directed towards solving a murder goes into seeing just how many times Ryan can take her shirt off.
After one night when Frannie is attacked by a mugger on the street she becomes a little on edge about everyone, even her student Cornelius (Pugh), who is writing a paper about the “innocence” of serial killer John Wayne Gacy and has an unbelievable crush on his teacher (uh oh it could be him) or her former boyfriend John Graham (Bacon) who has an unsettling obsession with Frannie as he follows her all around town and even breaks into her house one night.
So much of In the Cut is cliche and obvious that it is boring from the get-go. Frannie’s relationship with Malloy is dirty and the sex scenes are so far from sexy that they become gratuitous and monotonous.
About a half-hour into the movie I became extremely jealous of the gentleman sitting next to me that was fast asleep and it was all I could do to join him.
I have never seen a crime thriller with so little surprises and twists and as Frannie begins pointing her fingers at possible murderers it is so far into the movie that you only want the killer caught or for Frannie to fall under the knife herself.
The only redeeming quality of the movie was the directorial style Campion took using a slight blur in several scenes to hide pieces of the puzzle until they needed to be revealed, the only problem was that the revelation was just about as uninteresting as the rest of the movie and only made it more tiresome. Maybe she should try her style with a script like Seven or Fight Club where dirt and darkness worked.
If you are planning on seeing this pic be advised that you may want to bring a pillow or get an espresso triple shot before going to the theater.
