AS BAD CINEMA GOES, THIS IS A MASTERPIECE

AS BAD CINEMA GOES, THIS IS A MASTERPIECE
Miami Herald, The (FL)
September 10, 1986
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 2

The movie business having become a thing of the vast, mediocre middle ground -- few highs, few lows -- you can wait years for a movie as bad as Cut and Run. As rare as a masterpiece is the film that is awful in every respect: script, direction, performance, sound, cinematography, the works. Cut and Run probably had lousy gaffers, too.
Mark and Fran (Leonard Mann and the hapless Lisa Blount) are a two-person cable-TV news crew out to rip the lid off the
drug-peddling racket. Fran is ambitious; she's after a Pulitzer.

On stakeout, they nearly get the scoop on a Colombian woman using the now-legendary hollowed-out baby method of cocaine smuggling. Alas, by the time they break into the gang's Miami headquarters, everyone inside has been murdered, and they're forced to settle for a standup amid the corpses. (It won't be their last disappointment, either; wait till they find out that Pulitzers are for print reporters, not broadcasters.)

Anyway. Mark and Fran hitch a ride to the Colombian jungle, where they hope to find more cocaine smugglers, a survivor of the Jim Jones Guyana massacre who's leading some sort of crazed gang, and the missing son of their producer back home. Pretty much everyone is dead at the jungle outpost, too, so they do another standup with the bodies. Fran breaks down. Who can blame her? The corpses all have blow-pipe wounds, and there are crocodiles in the river.

Eventually it turns out that there are at least three separate sets of villains in Cut and Run, not counting the
filmmakers. At no point is the action more than vaguely comprehensible, and there are whole stretches that make no sense at all. The film is notable only as further evidence of the remarkable career slide of Lisa Blount, who had her moment in An Officer and a Gentleman, and for the curious presence of Karen Black, looking florid and unnerved in an expanded cameo. Without exception, the cast is atrocious.

Cut and Run (R) no stars

CAST: Lisa Blount, Leonard Mann, Willie Aames, Richard Lynch, Richard Bright, Michael Berryman, Karen Black.

CREDITS: Director: Ruggero Deodato. Producer: Alessandro Fracassi. Screenwriters: Cesare Frugoni, Dardano Sacchetti. Cinematographer: Alberto Spagnoli.

A New World Pictures release. Running time: 87 minutes.
Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex, violence.

**** Excellent; *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good; ** 1/2 Worth Seeing; ** Fair

* Poor; 0 Worthless