Presenting, for your ethical consideration...

The Final Cut presents quite the interesting story. Thanks to the marvel of the Zoe implant (from what I could tell, introduced in utero), the entirety of a person's life as they see and hear it is preserved like the ultimate home movie.

At the end of a person's life, the implant is (optionally) gone through by a "cutter", a person whose job it is to sift through a person's life story and create, based on extensive background discussion with family and friends, a Rememory...essentially a tribute video of all the good moments people want to remember the deceased for. A cutter lives by a strict code where they never sell or leak any such information and they are inherently forbidden to have one of these implants themselves.

There is a group of people opposed to the Zoe implants, and while many have them, there are large numbers who do not. Some view the implants as a tremendous invasion of privacy, and for obvious reasons. People could very well show up in someone's memory under less than flattering circumstances.

That (plus perhaps a bit more) can be ascertained from the trailer and movie jacket. So, how's the movie fare?

Robin Williams plays Alan Hakman, a professional cutter who has developed a stellar reputation for the rememories he pieces together from peoples' lives. He also is the guy people go to when the life in question has rather unsavory qualities. Even with full knowledge that every moment of their lives are recorded, some people still choose to make dubious choices, and Alan is, unfortunately, due to his past, perfectly suited to deal with these situations. The cast is rounded out with Jim Caviezel, long time associate of Alan, cutter, and man with his own problems, and Mira Sorvino who is Alan's love interest of sorts.

Overall, I thought the story was told pretty well and the acting was generally solid. I thought Williams brought an appropriate amount of gravity to his situation, I thought Caviezel turned in a good performance as well, and Sorvino's part was acted ok, but I'm still puzzling out just what she really had to do with the overall story. I thought it was worth the rental and it was a decent thriller. That's a bit vague, I know...I shall have to come up with some sort of rating system one of these days.

Any suggestions?

For the rest of the dissection, spoilers may be interspersed, you've been warned.

Think of all the things you do routinely, have done in the past, or have watched others do, then ask yourself whether or not mankind should ever aspire to this sort of technology. Every trip to the toilet, intimate moments of every persuasion, every ethical lapse, white lie and transgression laid bare once you croak. Knowing they had this in their head would undoubtedly impact the way many people live their lives, but would it necessarily be for the better? What opportunities or discoveries would be lost by people second-guessing or hesitating when they don't really need to? It's an interesting proposition.

In the film, Alan grows up harboring a deep and entirely personal tragedy of having watched another kid his own age fall to his death in an old warehouse, then not much later suffering the loss of both parents. His life and mental state is one spent traveling down a dark and lonely road, and he sees cutting the lives of the unclean as a penance he needs to pay for his own past deeds. Caviezel's character is/was a cutter who is working with anti-implant groups to try and expose the implants for what they really are, namely a way to record the grievous misdeeds of one of the people who headed up the company that manufactures them (the client whom Alan is working on).

Where I think Sorvino's character comes into this is, she knows Alan and knows what he does, and she's not sure how he copes with it, but she allows for the career as a necessary part of life. That is until she discovers Alan did the cutting on an old boyfriend and has therefore had some very deeply personal glimpses into her life. At that point, the full gravity of his job hits home.

Flaws aside, the idea behind the movie is certainly good food for thought in a society that so readily gets swept up in technological gizmos.