Cutaway

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!

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!

This movie is a head rush. From the beginning scene to very end, the action is out of sight. The plot is basic, but still gets the point across. I loved watching how people trained to perfect their sport. I have been skydiving a few times and this movie sent chills up and down my spine. This movie is a worth see movie and if you don't feel like skydiving after seeing this movie, you'd better check your pulse to see if you are still living!

Manos walks an interesting line between hype and facts all through the commentary. He stresses that Stephen Baldwin (Agent Vic Cooper) and Tom Berenger (Red Line) did their own stunts and without actually saying "all their own stunts", certainly implies it. Clearly that's not the case. He also implies that Dennis Rodman (Turbo) does his own stunts as well, but from what I understand from other sources, Rodman never even got near a plane in flight.

Manos does admit that he did -some- of the stunts for Red Line when Berenger was "unavailable." Manos' wife, Pam, does the skydiving for Maxine Bahns (Star), the female lead. Manos never fesses up as to who does the more advanced skydiving scenes (head down, swoop pond, ect.) for Baldwin. With the exception of Casper Van Dien (Delmira), those really are the Golden Knights and that's the wind tunnel at Fort Bragg, SC.

There are a couple of interesting factoids sprinkled throughout the commentary such as how so and so shot was done, how some of the action sequences were performed and that Marcos A. Ferraez (Ground Rush) was actually a skydiving buddy of Baldwin's before production was even given the green light. However, the really interesting stuff to me was how the script was developed and how some of the scenes and events were based upon Manos' true life experiences. I got the feeling that maybe at some point Manos actually had considered the tandem drug running scheme and he does mention that it had been done a couple of times maybe ten or so years ago to actually help finance a Nationals team.

I'm not sure where fact and hype merge here.

Manos does explain things about keeping the story, costumes and sport simple enough for the audience to understand yet "real", but he never explains his choice of the "8-way speed star" event. I'm thinking just 2 more people would have made that a lot more "real", but there was probably a budget consideration (23 shooting days x 2 people, costumes, hotel rooms, catering, pack jobs, ect.).

To my surprise, there are ALSO comments on yet another audio track from Baldwin and Bahns. I haven't yet fully listened to those, but it's clear from the sample I did listen to that they must have been having a -really- good time, maybe even a little tipsy (maybe a LOT tipsy), when they recorded them. I'll have to fully listen to those in the near future.

Paul

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.