The Final Cut

In six words: great idea-not so great execution. In a slightly vague future, Robin Williams plays a video editor named Alan, his job is assembling 1-2 hour video portraits of deceased clients whose parent's were well off enough to have had them fitted (while still in the womb) with a "Zoe" implant. Named after the corporation that initially developed this device, the implant records (24-7) everything that happens to a person during their lifetime. It is important to the story that viewers understand that these are not memories but actual recordings. This distinction is critical to the plot as well as to one of the interesting questions posed by the film; to what extent have our actual memories been distorted by time.The editors (called cutters) must distill down this lifetime of footage into a brief highlights video, discretely deleting scenes that would be offensive to the family of the decreased. This is not that different than the writers of obituary notices (see "Closer"). The video is shown at a special memorial service called a "rememory". To add some unnecessary complexity to the story there is a violent protest group who object to the whole concept. The basis of their objection is never adequately explained but seems to be centered on the fact that the footage is by necessity all from the person's own "point-of-view", with the protesters chanting "remember for yourself".Of course a Cutter sees everything (mostly in fast motion) making him or her privy to a person's every secret and sin. In the film they briefly raise the most interesting question posed by this whole idea, if you knew that someone (be it man or God) would replay your entire life, to what extent would it change your behavior? In the film most (but not all) people with the implant are aware that they have it.Knowing all this stuff makes Alan a lonely man. His philosophy: "The dead mean nothing to me, I took this job out of respect for the living", has caused him to avoid close interpersonal relationships, which might compromise the many confidences he is keeping. Within the closed community of cutters he is known as a "Sin Eater" because of his willingness to sanitize the lives of the scum of the earth, accepting clients that the other cutters reject. Williams looks even sadder and more depressed than in did in "What Dreams May Come". It is a extremely restrained performance, not especially challenging but perfectly suited to the mood of this film.Alan gets in trouble when he takes on a project for a rich widow (Stephanie Romanov). Her husband knew a lot of corporate secrets and had been playing around with their young daughter. This assignment means that Alan is suddenly very important to a lot of very powerful people who have a lot to gain by learning certain information that only he knows. So the film begins to go in the direction of those "messing around with something much bigger than you are" stories, it starts to have an episodic Raymond Chandler feel to it, and this fits nicely with what might be called a futuristic film noir production design.Overall the many interesting ethical and philosophical questions raised by "The Final Cut" are more interesting than the film itself. In fact, there is so little real suspense and character identification that the viewing process is mostly an exercise in pulling yourself back from your contemplation of earlier scenes so that you can follow what is happening on the screen.The film goes wrong by introducing a parallel story about Alan's childhood. While well handled, it fails in its purpose of explaining his adult motivations. By the end we care nothing about his character or his actions and are back to day dreaming about the many issues the film raises but does not adequately address.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Going into this film not knowing anything about it or expecting anything I'm not sure if this was the best decision to be made, as I sincerely feel that this movie is significantly lacking in something that I cannot fully lay out. Unfortunately I have to spoil it quite a bit to explain because the more I think about it in hindsight, the less it makes sense.The film is set in a near distant future where people can choose to have "Zoe Implants" implanted into their children, presumably before they're born, which will then begin to record everything the person sees in their life until they die. It cannot be removed or re-viewed until after the person is dead, so it serves as mainly a memorial for the person's loved ones after they're dead.It's a neat idea with groundbreaking ramifications for historical record, and unfortunately it's been capitalized by a private corporation which sells it and contracts people called "cutters" to serve as basically editors. They go through the literally hundreds of thousands of hours and piece together a movie-length compilation for funerals or the like, or keep the footage for investigating later on.Robin Williams character Alan is a Cutter, and he has a problem. The cold open of the film depicts him as a child playing with another child named Louis, who accidentally falls and presumably dies. Alan lives with this guilt and we are told it was a key moment in how his life ends up.We are TOLD this, I point out, because at no point in the film does this ever fit in the narrative. Nothing he does or says at any point seems in any way inferred by having a childhood friend die before his eyes. He's a bit of a socially awkward, lonely man, and that's about it.This becomes a serious problem for the film, because this becomes the driving plot point. While searching through the memories of a dead businessman and former owner or CEO guy of the company, he finds an encounter between him and a man who he realizes has the exact same mannerisms as his childhood friend he thought was dead. Trying to find out what happened to this friend becomes the driving force for Alan in the film.Except, as already mentioned, this supposedly traumatic event feels almost completely disconnected from the film. At no point is this event treated like a genuinely traumatic personal event. This childhood friend is barely even a "friend", as his only real interaction with Alan seems to be that one day's events.Basically, Louis and his fate is treated as an important event by no one and nothing in the film except Robin Williams' acting and dialogue. Even then it has barely any impact or relevance to what is happening in the film around him.The level of importance this is treated with by Alan is unfortunately not reflected by the film at all, as Alan ends up almost immediately discovering Louis's fate with barely any effort. And yet the film goes on after that, inexplicably seeming to try to search for something else.Alan's traumatic dilemma is resolved with literally no incident or trouble, and he proceeds to continue on needlessly investigating and making trouble.It almost feels like the movie was edited by someone who wasn't involved in the rest of the movie-making process. Such a huge core of the plot is treated as insignificant and no one seems to have informed Robin Williams, and so his performance reflects a literally life-changing urgency which is not at all reflected at any point in the film.This is the sort of inexplicable drama of an office worker climbing up the side of their office building trying to recover a photocopy for a business transaction under 200 dollars.

The movie is about "Cutters" people that make a life compilation when people die and the family and friends get shown footage of his/her lifestory. The movie continues with a quite good story but as soon as things get a bit interesting the movie ends and thats that.Terrible way to end the movie as it could have been really good. A dissapointment overall.

The film shows its age with the pace of the story telling, but still enjoyable for Robin Williams fans, plus shows the potential he had as a serious actor..

Not bad film, especially for just over a pound. Cheaper than going to the over priced cinema.

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Robin Williams gives a great performance per usual, and the story is great too, but the pacing is so slow. I think this movie was wasted potential. Watch any other movie that Robin Williams is in.