Film director Ryu comes home from work to find himself attacked by an intruder and when he regains consciousness he is tied with elastic ropes that stretches and therefore lets him move a little. Then he sees his wife who's tied up like a marionette puppet at the piano and have her fingers glued to the piano keys. The intruder tells him that he worked as an extra on one of Ryu's film sets and hates the director because he treats everyone with respect and apparently is jealous of the directors fame. He wants Ryu to show that also he can be evil, and if he can't prove it he'll chop off one of Ryu's wifes fingers every five minutes. Ryu, after seeing that the intruder means business, starts to confess to things he's not very proud of but this does not satisfy the intruder and finally he wants Ryu to commit murder of a little girl brought into the room to prove that also he can be evil.
Out of the three movie in the Three Extremes collection I found Cut to be the best piece by far. Byung-hun Lee (A Bittersweet Life, Addicted, JSA) who stars as film director Ryu is one of my fave actors when it comes to Korean flicks and Cut was also directed by Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, JSA) who's just a brilliant director. So when just looking at it like that, I was convinced this short film would not fail to impress, and neither it did.
Ryu, a film director and a likable and nice guy comes home one day from a shooting and finds an intruder in his home. Later on he wakes up and notice that he has been tied up with elastic ropes and he also discovers that his wife has been tied up like a marionette puppet at the piano with her fingers glued to the keys. At first he can't for his life figure out what the intruder want but soon becomes more aware of the demented individual who has him captured in his own home. Apparently the guy worked as an extra on one of Ryu's film sets and has a serious problem with the director being too nice and that he lack inner evil. And this seems to be his whole reason for doing this as he wants Ryu to show that he has an evil side to him as well.
 
He wants Ryu to confess to things he has done in the past to prove that he's not such a good man after all. The former insane extra also says that he'll chop off one of Ryu's wifes fingers every five minutes if he's not satisfied with Ryu's confessions. Ryu soon realizes that the man means business and eventually starts to confess to things he's not very proud of. He lets everything come out and even things that he know will hurt his wife, but the extra never seems to be fully satisfied and the further time goes by, the more fingers Ryu's wife starts missing.
Why this is the best movie out of the three is mainly because it's the one that is most easy to get involved in and where you really can't help but to feel for the characters. Other than that, it's the most brutal one out of the three and even the most graphical. The viewer gets to sit through torture, amputation, child abuse among other things and it's hard not to be affected by it all.
The directing is absolutely awesome and the story has some twists to it, and really delivers in the end. The psychotic intruder speaks in a totally different dialect which also makes him separate himself even more from the other characters, and that's a fun little addition to the whole thing as it makes it even more different. The acting is brilliant and Byung-hun Lee really stands out as the director who has to go through hell and makes the movie experience feel quite realistic.
Of course Cut is quite short only lasting for 48 minutes, but that's just about enough. I don't know how it would've come out looking if it would've been a full length feature, but it doesn't really matter, it's just great the way it is. The best film in Three Extremes but that doesn't mean Box and Dumplings were not very good as well. Definitely worth a look.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Three Extremes: Cut
MOVIE YEAR: 2004
DIRECTOR: Chan-wook Park
WRITING CREDITS: Chan-wook Park
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Byung-hun Lee, Hye-jeong Kang, Jung-ah Yum
COUNTRY: South Korea
RUNTIME: 48 min
RATING: 10/10
Cut Website/IMDB Click here
Cut Trailer Click here
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