After winning gold, Alex Delgado (Francia Raisa) is back on ice - only these days she is teaching kids how to skate.
After her relationship broke down, so did her career.
She thinks her ice-skating dream is over - until former singles star James McKinsey (Brendan Fehr) appears.
He has been banned from singles, and wants to make the transition to pair skating.
Alex accepts the offer, even though she is weary of his reputation.
Will opposites attract (for the fourth time)?
A sequel featuring Francia Raisa reprising her role as Alex Delgado, The Cutting Edge 4: Fire and Ice feels like compensation for all the problems of its predecessors.
That is really the worst thing about this movie because in every other capacity it is fairly solid romcom/sports amalgam.
In its favour, this movie benefits from her presence and Brendan Fehr is a more charismatic performer than her last co-star. His character, James McKinsey, is also a little more dynamic.
The building blocks for this installment are solid - James is a singles star forced into duo competition because he is banned from singles competition. This gives him a good motivation for seeking out Alex as a partner, and also a reason for conflict when he is offered a chance back in singles competition.
This might be a controversial statement but Alex and James are the best cast leads of the franchise. For once the leading man is not a wash - Fehr and Raisa feel like two characters interacting with each other.
And the script gives the characters reasons for sticking together, and some faultilines to give their road to romance some wobbles.
It is not mindblowing, but after two movies worth of stakeless coupling, this movie is a model of scripting relationships.
James is this movie’s version of Kate from the original. He may not have her line with a withering putdown, but he is cocky and self-obsessed. Not enough to be a monster - Behr does not play James as being threatened by Alex - but this movie lays enough pipe so that his eventual downfall makes sense.
His character’s arrogance also has a long payoff. This might just be the effect of having two actors with real chemistry, but it felt like James and Alex got together too fast. But I give the film credit for letting James destroy the relationship without jabbing the viewer in the eye with obvious foreshadowing.
When James sees Alex interacting with another man, he puts together a story in his head that she is not in love with him. It is a fairly simple scene without exposition - we just see James watching this interaction from afar, and it works. It is not new but it is a good use of visual storytelling.
Of course this leads to fissures in their relationship - but not bad enough that they cannot get back together before the third act.
And the script actually gives their final reunion a bit of tension.
Because of their breakup, James returns to speed skating after they are made the alternates for the pair competition. This means at the pivotal moment, he has to make a choice between the two events.
Once more, Francia Raisa is the MVP of the movie. Fehr is good, but Raisa is committed. She gives energy, humour and fierce intelligence to what could have been a cookie cutter role.
This movie took a while to get going, but once the leads were together, the movie starts working.
The characters actually have wounds which they try to avoid sharing with each other.
For once, the final skate has some emotional undercurrent - director Stephen Herek films their routine in a warm red colour palette, with slow dissolves. It is not mindblowing, but this fim feels more put together in a cinematic sense than its predecessors.
This movie is no masterpiece, however as a sports/romance movie it puts the building blocks together efficiently.
If you are stuck in lockdown and looking for something to marathon, The Cutting Edge is not the franchise to go for. But if you are interested, watch the original and Francia Raisa’s duology.
Watching all four together, it still feels like a great concept waiting for a great execution. But if you scramble together the ingredients from ¾ of the movies together, you can assemble your own perfect version in your head.
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