Cutaway (2000)

Just perfect...

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Blistering performances.

Somehow I got the feeling that they left out a considerable amount of scenes that make much more sense of the whole drugs angle in the movie. The moment Stephen Baldwin goes undercover you will get a "Point Break" flashback and will realize how great that movie is compared to this little movie. But that said I must admit that "Cutaway" has some amazing sky diving scenes. Those stunts alone is reason enough to see this movie. And probably the director realized that since he didn't make much of the plot. Tom Berenger is great as always but thought he was far too underused as he could have provided much more depth to his character and story if he had more scenes. The interactions between Ron Silver and Stephen Baldwin could have been avoided entirely since they add nothing to the conflicts an undercover agent has doing his job. Since it already is made clear from the first scene that Stephen Baldwin is not doing his job out of a sense of duty but simply to be the best in whatever activity he is presented with. The scenes with Ron Silver create an expectation of an impact that never occurs at least not as big as it could have been. So in short forget about the plot and just enjoy the beautiful skydiving scenes!

Well. This movie was a waste of my time, even though I didn't had anything to do anyway when I saw it. Yet I watched it until the end so there has to be some good that goes with all the bad.The good: The skydive scenes were at times very decent, and that has to be the sole reason for me watching this through. Nice, colorful images and even though I'm no sportsman myself I think some parachute enthusiasts might be somewhat pleased with it.The bad: About everything else I guess. The story is a straight ripoff from Dropzone without adding anything new at all (it actually makes it even worse), which shows to me that the director didn't really want to tell a story anyway. Next there is bad acting, shallow characters, annoying music and some nice faces to attempt to make up for it. But it just won't do.Watch this if you really have to, but I say you don't.

I enjoyed this film. Baldwin is a cop investigating elusive drug traffickers. Berenger is the leader of a sky diving team that Baldwin suspects of being behind the trafficking. I picked this movie up because of Casper Van Dien's part. He appears at the beginning as a military trainer Baldwin hires to steady his skills. Van Dien later appears again at the end as a competitive adversary to Baldwin's team. Watching all of the sky diving and training was very interesting. Most of the suspense was during flight instead of during "law enforcement" confrontations as one might expect. The WIND tunnel where Van Dien trained Baldwin looked SO fun! Baldwin's turmoil is mostly trying to balance his loyalty to the sky diving team and the police force. The ending isn't really predictable, but it's not surprising either. Certainly worth a watch!

An odd mix between undercover-cop-infiltrating-the-bad-guys and sports-movies! It does have a likeable cast and some terrific skydiving-scenes (the lead actors obviously jumped in real life). But what really makes it entertaining enough to sit through is the flamboyant performance of good old Tom Berenger, reminding us of what once made him one of the finest actors on-screen. Here he really is half the show in a 9 million dollar production that looks like 20 million.