The Final Cut -- 2004 -- PG-13

'm not going to go back and review every movie I've seen over the past few weeks, but I thought I'd do some of them here and there. Yes, I fell behind on it due to this and that that goes on. Ah, well.

This film has one seriously juicy premise to it. Imagine if there was a chip that could be placed into your brain during your fetal development that would record every moment of your life from birth to death, and after you die, your family gets a movie of your life, seen through your eyes, hearing what you hear. The film follows a cutter, someone who takes the years and years of raw footage and makes a 2 hour movie out of it, who takes the job of making a movie out of a prominent man's life. Trouble is that not everyone agrees with this chip idea and they don't want anyone to have them. They want this man's life footage to use against him and the corporation that makes the chip, which puts this cutter's life in danger if he won't give it up.

Add to this layer the cutter's own character. He actually has a very well drawn character, and the movie kicks off with the one event that makes him who he is: he talks some kid into crossing a beam and the kid falls down into a shaft. Instead of helping this kid, he leaves him there and runs away, never knowing if the kid lived or died. As far as he is concerned, though, the kid was dead. This event shaped his life, but imagine his surprise when during the editing of this important man's life, he sees a familiar trait in a total stranger. Could it be the kid he thought was dead? This quest drives him through the film. This is what the movie is about: his trying to discover that part of his past.

Everyone else in this film serves to support our main character (incidentally played by Robin Williams in a very non-comedic role), and while they are given some very brief histories, they are nothing so complex as our main guy is. He makes his mistakes and his secrets get exposed as his world slowly crumbles around him because of who he is or what he does or who he is working on.

I really enjoyed this one, and thought it certainly doesn't rank as on of the best films ever, it was very good with a premise to die for. It's one of those that you just wish you'd thought of it first.