Tuning Out "The Final Cut"

Alan Hakman (Robin Williams) is the recognized best Cutter in the world. When remarkable technology allows every moment of person’s life to be recorded, Alan’s job is to shape that playback into ReMemories, recorded eulogies to the departed where their own life is shaped and molded for public display. It is a truly astounding advancement, but is Hakman doing a vital human service for the dearly departed or is he re-fashioning a person’s life for easy consumption; removing the lumps and bumps of their mistakes and leaving only a glossy pre-fabricated lie in its place?

That is the central conceit of writer-director Omar Naïm’s intriguing if ultimately tiresome thriller “The Final Cut.” Taking a play from both “The Twilight Zone” and 1995’s cyberpunk classic “Strange Days,” Naïm attempts to travel the murky waters of recorded history and humanity’s part in shaping it, elevating the discussion to a ‘what if’ scenario that enters into the very mind. But while this concept is inherently interesting, the director really doesn’t know what to do with any of the precepts he lays forth, instead reducing the film to a childhood mystery far less absorbing than the moral quandary hiding at the picture’s core.

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; he just as quickly lets it drop, returning instead to a tired story line involving an apparently tragic day in a construction site.

The acting is surprisingly only okay at best. Williams phones in the very same performance he used in the thriller “One-Hour Photo,” using all the same mannerisms, tics and shoulder shrugs just this time without having to slide into psychosis. Caviezel, meanwhile, still seems to think he’s playing Jesus, only here he’s gotten a facial hair makeover that’s eerily similar to Robert DeNiro’s in “Angel Heart” making for an odd combination of reference points to say the least. Of the major players, only Sorvino scores, bringing a surprising amount of pain, warmth and depth to a character whose best traits are only thinly explored in the script. Romanov, Mimi Kuzyk (as a promiscuous fellow Cutter) and Genevieve Buechner (as the young Isabel Bannister) also have a few good moments, unfortunately they’re just too few and far between.

It is in those moments, however, I really became the most disappointed in “The Final Cut.” There is a heartbreaking exchange between Hakman and Isabel; the younger forced to lie even though she knows the other has seen the secrets she cries herself asleep trying to forget. There is also a simply splendid dialogue between an icily paternal Kuzyk and an increasingly fragile Williams where the themes that should have been explored are wrenchingly put forth, the duo discussing the more uncomfortable aspects of their chosen profession with detached emotionalism that’s distinctly unpleasant.