Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly) is an Olympic-level figure skater in pairs. The 1992 games are fast approaching, and she needs a partner.
After an injury ends his hockey career, Doug Dorsey (D. B. Sweeney) is brought in as her partner.
Having burned through everyone else, Doug is Kate's last chance at Olympic gold.
As the pair struggle to train and work together, they begin to fall in love.
Kind of.
How to sum up this movie?
The Cutting Edge is not good but it is almost great. It fails to fully function at what it wants to be, but it gets close - and if it had succeeded I think it would have been awesome.
Does that count as an overall thought?
I was put onto this movie by the Bad Romance podcast (hosted by Jourdain Searles and Bronwyn Isaac). Before I continue, I reccomend listening to that podcast - they review bad romantic comedies and they are terrific - the hosts are insightful and funny, and they really delve into the subtexts of the films, the genre and broader issues of gender and sexual politics. In other words, way more insightful than this review!
I am a fan of movies which do not quite succeed at what they are aiming for, and the hosts’ critiques intrigued me. I tracked down a copy, watched it, and liked it so much I watched it two more times.
Part of the reason is that, while it does not work, there is something about the mechanics of the genres The Cutting Edge is combining that always work on me:
The opposites attract and fall in love
A team of underdogs learn how to work together and win at some kind of sporting competition
While they can be predictable, these kinds of stories are inherently dramatic. You want to see people fall in love; you want to see the underdog sports team win. We know how these stories end but that is part of the appeal.
The other part of what makes it fascinating is seeing the ways in which the film fails to properly execute the story steps of either genre.
In the end The Cutting Edge feels halfway between being a successful underdog sports movie and a romantic drama.
Thanks to a combination of script, casting and directorial choices, it fumbles at both. However, hat makes the movie fascinating is that it feels close to working.
As a premise, it sounds great: a hockey player and a figure skater have to work out their differences in order to get to the Olympics. It is a classic clash of opposites.
And it is also where the movie’s problems begin.
The relationship dynamic is an obvious riff on Taming of the Shrew, but the movie does not do much to fully flesh out these initial characterisations: Kate Mosley is presented as an entitled, bad-tempered rich heiress, Doug Dorsey is a macho salt of the earth from middle America.
What this movie is missing is context and a bit of nuance that would make its central pair feel like characters, and feel like a couple that makes sense. The movie also feels weighted toward Doug as both the protagonist in the pair’s conflict, and as the catalyst for bringing Kate down to earth.
For a variety of reasons, this balance between the leads does not work.
While the film is more concerned with showing how Kate’s wealth has made her a shitty person, the movie does not fully reckon with the pressures she is under to perform. Kate is introduced being verbally castigated by her longtime coach; a few scenes later we see an empty glass case that her father reveals is intended for Olympic gold. These are important moments intended to show why Kate is the way she is.
But the movie has little empathy for her - she is still an entitled madam who must be taken down a peg.
The film appears to think that Doug is the more sympathetic of the film’s leads, but the casting (and the script) do not help his case.
The hosts of Bad Romance highlighted D. B. Sweeney as miscasting, and I completely agree. As a former hockey player with a chip on his shoulder, he is totally believable. As the romantic lead of a movie? Nope.
Every time he looks at Moira Kelly, I feel uneasy. He never comes off as charming or empathetic. When he makes sexual inferences in their early scenes, he feels like a creep. When he dunks on Kate, it feels like a jock’s bullying tactics. What chemistry they do have feels more like lust - a one night stand they will both regret.
Sweeney is a fine actor, but he does not fit this movie.
Even though his set up indicates differently, the movie treats Doug as good and right, and not in need of change or growth. The movie thinks all he needs is a different outlet for his passion and to fall in love with somebody rather than sleep around.
Even at that script level, I never feel like we get an evolution in their relationship as a skating pair. There is no sense of compromise or even creation as Doug and Kate learn to work together - we get montages to show time passing but there needs to be an arc of growing collaboration.
However, there is the tease of something more interesting in the movie which could have given Doug’s character some depth.
Doug is a macho guy who loves hockey, partying and sex (he says so). From early on, he shows discomfort with anything that goes against his (heterosexual) sense of masculinity.
When he is first shown a pair of figure skates, he shows revulsion. When he is being fitted for the Nationals, he destroys the costume. He wants hair metal rather than classical music for their routine. And when Kate’s former partner shows interest in him, he is uncomfortable. The movie is filled with moments where it seems like Doug’s sense of masculinity and sexuality are being challenged, but the movie side-steps making them anything important.
While the movie wants to be about Doug bringing his world into Kate’s, it seems like the more natural evolution for Doug is for him to rethink himself and his relationship to masculinity. Particularly since this is a romance, and in movies like this you do expect a character who holds in his feelings learns how to express themselves.
The one time I felt real empathy for Doug is when he goes home and confesses what he has been up to his family and friends. He seems genuinely nervous and unsure how they will react that he is a figure skater.
Maybe this is just me but I did not get the sense from his brother’s earlier introduction that he was stepped in that kind of machismo - he seemed way too mature to oppose Doug’s career choice. He seemed more concerned with Doug hurting himself.
While it is not set up properly for the tension the filmmakers want, I liked this scene because it is the one time where Doug seems genuinely vulnerable.
I wish the movie had fleshed this thread out - it would have helped make Doug a more relatable protagonist.
It is part of a big issue I have withthe film is that there is never a point where our heroes reveal their vulnerabilities to each other. Doug and Kate always seem to be at loggerheads and I never felt any real shift in their relationship dynamic.
What is most baffling is that I found it almost impossible to track their growing attraction to each other.
As I said earlier, I watched the movie three times before I decided to start writing about it - and it took me three goes to pick out what the filmmakers think are the signposts of our heroes falling in love.
The key one is when Kate sees Doug surrounded by women at the New Year’s party and is unsettled - I was unsettled because I could see what they were trying to do but it does not come off. I never got the sense that the co-stars are into each other, and the script spends too much time on having them tear each other.
While this section is very entertaining (Kate’s put-downs are hilariously cruel), the “lovers” are at such odds it is hard to see how they could come together at the end.
As a sports movie, The Cutting Edge is frustrating - the filmmakers only show glimpses of the pair’s routine, and it is shown in tight close ups which are in blurred slow-motion.
It is especially frustrating during their initial Olympics set, because the announcers describe the set as lacking feeling. It would have been so much better if that disconnect could have been conveyed through the routine.
The filmmakers have an easy out - all the ice-skating scenes take place in shadow so you cannot tell who anyone is. They could have shot the scenes in wide with doubles. It worked for Flashdance, and that came out a decade earlier.
Weirdly, while I do not buy their romantic chemistry, I do buy Sweeney and Kelly as teammates - the movie might have worked as a straight sports drama, with no love story. There were times I was engrossed in their partnership on that level - I was fooled enough that when Doug tells Kate he loves her it jarred me out of thinking this was just a sports movie.
The Cutting Edge skates on the edge of greatness, but never makes the cut (I’m sorry). It is a movie that is ripe for a remake that can flesh out its central romance into something audiences can get properly invested in, and showcase its characters’ athleticism so we can root for them to win.
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