The Final Cut (2004 film)
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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 every moment of people's lives are recorded by "Zoe Implants", 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 movie also brings up the problem of infringement of privacy, and can be seen as mirroring the loss of privacy in today's society.
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.
The portion of the film that first introduces Hakman's colleagues, Thelma and Hasan, was filmed in the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver.
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[edit] Taglines
- Every moment of your life recorded. Would you live it differently?
- In the end, he sees everything.
- Your life wasn't what you thought it was.
[edit] MPAA Rating
Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, some violence, sexuality and language.
[edit] Misc
Length: 1 hour and 35 mins (95 mins)
[edit] 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. 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. It becomes clear that Fletcher is allied with the anti-Zoe protesters, and wants the footage to discredit 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 a woman 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. She becomes angry it was edited so much, and shoots 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, 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.
[edit] Continuity Mistakes
When Alan first uploads the contents of Charles Bannister's implant, the computer voice says that there are 544,628 hours of footage stored on it. That equals 62 years, 2 months. However, moments later, a newspaper headline says "Bannister Dead at 54".
The final shot of the movie shows Alan looking at himself in the mirror, from his point of view (evident from his name being on the file information). However, just before the screen cuts to black, he turns and walks away. The problem is that the camera doesn't move along with him, which it should. Other than in this final shot, there are no other instances of this type of continuity anywhere else in the movie. This may, however, be an intentional statement.
