Final Cut Review

Final Cut Movie Review


Robin Williams plays Alan, a 51-year-old man in a futuristic world whose career consists of cutting peoples’ life memories when they pass away. This is to be made into a presentation or a ‘Rememory’ to be shown to the deceased person’s family and friends. The ‘Zoe Eye’ invention is placed into the back of a newborn’s head. This item must be purchased beforehand.

This film’s camera angles are extraordinary and unreal. The cemetery scene really gives the audience a sense of grief when Alan puts the necklace onto the cemetery stone as the camera pans around to the back and gets a good front body view of Alan and his emotions.

The plot for Alan really starts to thicken when he takes on an assignment involving a well-known commercial lawyer named Bannister, whom just so happened to work for the leading manufacturer of ReMemory technology. His widow Jennifer (Stephanie Romanov of TV’s “Angel”) is the first person to ever successfully sue to have an employee’s chip removed from company storage, and those on the forefront against what they see as insidious invasion of privacy want to get their hands on it at all costs. Leading this charge is former Cutter and friend of Alan’s named Fletcher (Jim Caviezel), and he’s not afraid to resort to violence to get his hands on it, even if it means putting his old compatriot in harm’s way.

What should happen next is a blow-by-blow examination of the goods and evils of just this sort of technology. In an age where discussion of the Patriot Act and our very own personal liberties are thrust under a microscope in the face of global terrorism, the very idea of constant and all-pervasive surveillance isn’t too far out of the realm of possibility. But Naïm’s film plods forward with all the dramatic momentum of a carnival sideshow, and once you get past the eye-catching exterior there’s little of substance hiding behind the curtain. It doesn’t help that every time the director raises an intriguing idea or plot possibility; Bannister turns out to have been molesting his own daughter, while the emotionally cloistered Hakman is dating a woman (Mira Sorvino) he became attracted to while cutting another’s ReMemory.

I give this movie: 7/10