The Final Cut

This article is about the 2004 film. For the 1998 film starring Jude Law, see Final Cut (1998 film).

The Final Cut
Movie poster for The Final Cut
Directed by	Omar Naim
Produced by	Nick Wechsler
Written by	Omar Naim
Starring	Robin Williams Mira Sorvino James Caviezel
Music by	Brian Tyler
Cinematography	Tak Fujimoto
Distributed by	Lions Gate Films
Release date(s)	2004
Running time	95 min.
Country	Canada / Germany
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Final Cut is a film written and directed by Omar Naim, released in 2004. The cast includes Robin Williams, James Caviezel, Mira Sorvino and Genevieve Buechner. It was produced by the Canadian production company, Lions Gate Films. The film featured original music by Brian Tyler. The story takes place in an alternate reality in which people can pay to have their babies implanted with memory chips. These "Zoe Implants", developed by EYE Tech company, record every moment of their lives, so that they may be viewed by loved ones after one's death. The plot centers on Alan Hakman (Williams), a cutter, whose job it is to edit the Zoe footage into a feature-film length piece, called a "Rememory".

The Final Cut is about subjectivity, memory and history; posing the question, "If history is what is written and remembered, then what happens when memories are edited and rewritten?" The topic is similarly dealt with in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, wherein the protagonist works for the "Ministry of Truth", a bureacracy charged with re-writing history so as to reflect the current stance of Big Brother.

The film won the award for best screenplay at the Deauville Film Festival and was nominated for best film at the Catalonian International Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

Plot Summary

The film opens with Alan Hakman and another named Louis Hunt, children who enter an abandoned factory. They come to a long wooden plank suspended high above the floor. Louis falls after Hakman goads him into crossing the plank. Hakman apparently witnesses him bloody and dead. The film advances to Hakman's adult life, portraying him creating two rememories from Zoe implants. It turns out that Hakman is a very skillful cutter whose edits can make "saints out of criminals", and his services are highly valued by rich immoral people (Hakman sees himself doing a good deed, as a sin-eater who removes past crimes from dead people so they can rest in peace.) At the screening of a rememory, a fellow cutter, Fletcher, offers Hakman $500 000 for the Bannister footage he recently acquired. Bannister is a former EYE Tech manager, and it appears the Zoe footage reveals details of his life of a scandalous nature, implied to be child molestation of his young daughter. It becomes clear that Fletcher is allied with the anti-Zoe protesters, and wants the footage to discredit EYE Tech and the implant. Hakman refuses to surrender it after locating in the footage a person he believes to be Hunt; he sets the "Guillotine," which in the film is the computer used to sort and edit ("cut") the Zoe footage, to search for more images of the man. He gets a handgun.

Hakman brings his lover into his apartment, Delila, and leaves her alone with his Guillotine. When he returns he puts bullets in his firearm under the belief that Fletcher and his associate have broken into his apartment to steal the Bannister footage. Instead, he finds Delila poring over the full Zoe footage of her late boyfriend. Hakman apparently uses the footage to learn about her dreams and interests, so he can please her better. Delila becomes angry that her private memory with her boyfriend is used in such a manner, and shoots the Guillotine, the bullet hits the Bannister card destroying its footage.

Hakman and his colleagues break into the EYE Tech headquarters to locate Hunt's Zoe footage as a second source, and although he does not find Hunt's footage, because the two names begin with the letter 'H' he discovers a file under his own name. He realizes that he himself has a Zoe implant, violating the cutter's code that no cutter may have one. He immediately undergoes the first stage of a specialized tattooing procedure to end the implant's ability to record data. Hakman then requests that his colleagues perform a dangerous procedure to biopsy the Zoe footage from his own brain, so he can obtain closure on Hunt's death. On viewing the footage, which is much more accurate than his own recollection, he discovers that Louis survived the childhood fall, and what he mistook for blood was actually spilled paint.

When Fletcher and his associate finally break in to steal the Bannister footage, they find out it was destroyed. Hakman lies to Bannister's wife that a technical fault destroyed it. Hakman visits Louis' grave, and is joined by Fletcher, who has discovered through the tattoo parlour that Hakman has an implant and that it recorded the critical images from the Bannister footage. Foregoing the biopsy procedure, Fletcher and co. chase Hakman through the graveyard filled with video tombstones, and his associate then shoots Hakman in the chest, killing him. The film closes with Fletcher cutting images of Hakman's editing of the Bannister footage, promising that Hakman's life will mean something.

See also

• Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in films
• Neo-Luddism - a modern movement to oppose technological development.
• Video-Enhanced Grave Marker - an idea to made video tombstones (as seen at the end of the film), patented in 2006.

External links

• The Final Cut at the Internet Movie Database
• The Final Cut at All Movie Guide

Donate to Wikimedia