Close to Reality
Added 8/10/2009
In FINAL CUT, director Omar Naim presents a not too distant future that features a technology that gives the film its dramatic impetus. When a child is born, his/her parents can opt for a pricey implant, called a Zoe, which fits in the child's head and will record every second of the child's life right up to the moment of death. Now this concept has a myriad of possibilities to alter society and the way that people can or dare to interact with each other. However, director Naim chooses to avoid these wider psycho-social implications to focus on a standard thriller of industrial espionage. This tightening of focus works since Naim wanted to entertain the viewer without morphing the film into a "message" medium that might have emerged as insufferably pedantic. Robin Williams is Alan Hakman, whose job is to edit or "cut" a lifetime of memories into a handy movie-length summary suitable for viewing at funerals. I was mildly surprised that no one in the movie seemed to find a use for such an implant. Each person would be an infallible lie detector. Juries would have no trouble assessing a defendant's guilt. Hakman works under enormous pressure. There are many protestors who violently oppose what he does on moral grounds. The several vignettes that show these protestors reminded me of leftists who think nothing of violating the rights of others with curses and beatings to exercise their own rights of free expression. Further, Hakman daily has to edit out the unsavory aspects of his deceased client, thus forcing him to see evil up close and personal, and then delete the offending scene only to have to go home to wrestle with his conscience. Williams portrays Hakman as a tightly wound up individual who has his own demons of memory to contend with. Mira Sorvino is his lover who cares for him but only just so far since his job erects a massive wall of social static that bars true intimacy. Jim Caveziel is a former "cutter" who tries to strongarm Hakman into giving him access to a recorded memory that if exposed will topple the entire industry of re-memorizing.
FINAL CUT uses a constant series of claustrophobic scenes that intensify the torment that is right there on the viewing screen of a recorded memory. The technology involved does not seem that far fetched, but viewer interest does not lie in that. We watch movies like FINAL CUT because it is full of quirky characters, none of whom is truly evil, but all of whom are torn in deciding what is right, not what is the path of least resistance. FINAL CUT forces us to conclude that life's precious memories must not be hawked for sale, but deserve a silent and private contemplation that has no place for a public forum.
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The shape of our memories
Added 6/16/2009
In the future, no one wealthy enough to afford a Zoe implant will be able to forget. With the Rememory Project and the Zoe Ocular Implant, every memory a person has is stored.
Cutters, like Alan Hackman (Robin Williams) take these stored images and create a life-tape of the person's memories for the family to immortalize the decedent. Obviously, these memories require some editing -- and some more than others. As the group of protesters say, "You take murderers and turn them into saints."
When Hackman gets a controversial job, he sees a man in the memories of another than he needs to find and ends up uncovering more about the job and himself than he ever cared to. This is a fascinating look at people's lives, particularly the man who assembles their memorials.
Rebecca Kyle, June 2009
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The title implies a good editor, and doesn't deliver
Added 7/5/2008
Unfortunately, this movie is poorly edited and the plot is revealed in an unintuitive order. The cinematography is great, and the color scheme looks well thought out. Williams delivers the same performance he does in One Hour Photo, a decidedly good movie, and so there's some tedium to the method of his acting here.
In a movie about cutting and editing and rearranging memories, I question the to choice to name any character, especially the protagonist, Hackman. I laughed out loud every time I heard it. I could not take seriously the film's variation on the Big Brother theme: If someone could watch your life through your eyes and you still did the same good and terrible things throughout your life time, just as people do today, what is the point of the film's premise? What is so significant about systematic surveillance if human behavior remains status quo?
You aren't missing much if you miss this film. And if you did mistakenly watch it, you may want to have the time you spent watching the film cut from your memory.
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CAN'T SAY I LIKED IT
Added 7/3/2008
Something is missing in this movie - something just doesn't "gel". Robin Williams has played some amazing roles - such as in What Dreams May Come (perhaps his best movie/performance ever). This movie was more along the lines of 1 Hr Photo. But the topic was too big, the "science" too outlandish. The concept of an implant that remembers everything you see in life - so the family left behind after you die can preserve certain memories - is quite frankly ridiculous. It's a fundamentally stupid idea, a stupid concept, and I think that's where the movie fails - right from the very premise. The performances are OK. Williams is very good as usual. Sorvino was good - though aged terribly in this movie. Some of the other acting was downright terrible. The fat little kid who played a young Williams was just annoying - but maybe he was supposed to be. But again, the problem here is not with the actors, but the script. The whole memory implant concept is so unrealistic, so stupid, that it puts the whole movie beyond belief. So even though there are some good moments in the movie - it's like building a house on a weak foundation. The whole movie fails because the foundation (the premise) is so weak.
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Be sure your sins will find you out.
Added 4/16/2008
Alan Hakman (Robin Williams) has the world's worst job. Set in the future, he operates a business that is responsible for "editing" the memories of rich, dead executive-types who's families want their memories to digitally be replayed during their funeral ceremonies. Some offer as much as $500,000 to Hakman for his services, and the sum of money is typically predicated on just how many skeletons the recently expired loved-ones had in their overpriced closets, and just how good a job he does at "cutting" those memories.
Hakman is himself no saint. A tragedy from his own childhood still haunts him and drives him to border-line paranoia. He is unsure of how this past episode actually happened, but is quite certain he was directly responsible for the incident, at least in his own mind. When Hakman discovers that one of his clients has hired him to erase certain memories of her dead husband in order to essentially expunge his dark involvement with their pre-teen daughter, Hakman's own personal ghosts come howling back to confront him and besiege him with questions on whether he should continue to dissolve certain memories of these shady dead men in order to continue making a living by splicing their memories and making them appear almost saintly.
This was a completely original and very entertaining film. Jim Caviezel and Mira Sorvino co-star. I recommend this film to anyone desiring an original plot with a highly-engrossing storyline.
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