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The Final Cut Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic material, some violence, sexuality and language) Theater release: July 21, 2009 by Lions Gate Films Directed by: Omar Naim Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes Cast: Robin Williams (Alan Hakman), Mira Sorvino (Delila), James Caviezel (Fletcher), Mimi Kuzyk (Thelma), Stephanie Romanov (Jennifer Bannister), Genevieve Buechner (Isabel Bannister) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

The dead live on in our memory, or so the saying goes. And these days, our memories are increasingly shaped by the high-tech artifacts we leave behind; to a certain degree, the home videos and Web pages we produce have spared us the ancient task of holding on to the past through personal recollections and shared stories. Now imagine that, instead of, say, a nicely framed photo standing next to a casket, you could show a short film taken straight from the brain of the deceased. The actual sights and sounds that that person experienced, or at least a heavily edited version of them, would then be preserved forever, or for at least as long as anyone felt like watching them. You might even be tempted to claim that such films conferred a form of immortality on the dear departed.

Robin Williams plays Alan Hakman, a 'cutter'

This is the premise of The Final Cut, the latest in a series of intriguing, if flawed, films that explore where our technology might take us in the not-so-distant future. Robin Williams stars as a "cutter"—a person who edits the memories of the dead—named Alan Hakman, who has a reputation for his willingness to tackle the ugliest memory cases. Hakman believes he is responsible for the death of a boy he met when he was young, and he is so emotionally crippled by guilt that he does his penance, as it were, by willingly overseeing the memories of those whose lives were especially full of things to feel guilty about.

Like other recent sci-fi films, such as Code 46 and I, Robot, the film begins by setting out the laws under which its protagonists operate. Cutters themselves, we are told, are not allowed to have the memory-saving "Zoe implants," which are planted in some children before they are born; because they see the most intimate secrets of so many other individuals, a single cutter's own memories of those other cases could cause quite a scandal if they got into the wrong hands. In addition, cutters may not give or sell the memories they have been assigned to anyone else, and they may not mix the memories of different people.

Delila (Mira Sorvina) and Alan Hakman (Robin Williams)

Although these rules are no doubt designed to soothe the public's fears, the technology behind the implants is still opposed very strongly by an increasingly vocal, and violent, band of protestors who wear "electrosynth tattoos" to inhibit the implants that have been put within their own bodies, and who chant such slogans as "Remember for yourself!" and "Live for today!" One of them even tells Hakman, "You are blasphemous!"

Exactly what writer-director Omar Naim wants us to think of these activists is unclear; you suspect he shares their basic concerns, and yet their aggressive, antagonistic posturing would seem to make them the villains of this story. Intriguingly, it also turns out that one of the key figures in this movement is a former cutter named Fletcher, who is played by Passion of the Christ star Jim Caviezel, seen here sporting a rather dark tan and a very fake-looking beard and moustache. The fact that Caviezel now plays a morally questionable character with ties to religious zealots lends an ironic subtext to his exchanges with Hakman, who skeptically asks at one point if Fletcher is concerned for his soul.

The story's spiritual implications are made explicit in other scenes, too. When Hakman's girlfriend Delila (Mira Sorvino) sees his editing equipment—or "guillotine," as those in the biz call it—for the first time, she remarks, "You're a mortician—or a priest—or a taxidermist. All of them." And when Fletcher asks Hakman how he can stand to delete so much evil from a person's life, how he can maintain the illusion that bad people were decent, Hakman appeals to the tradition of "sin eaters"—figures who take the sins of the deceased onto themselves, so that the dead may enter the afterlife. Hakman also says, defensively, that he can "forgive" people for their sins, even if others can't.

Hakman (Robin Williams) at work

But this is, of course, a weak reply, and not simply because it is only God who can forgive sins, or because it is only Jesus who can take away the sins of the world. Hakman's defense would also seem to contradict what he tells the wife of his latest project: "The dead mean nothing to me. I take this job because I respect the living." Hakman's forgiveness is not born out of compassion, but out of a sort of numb apathy.

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