Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a 2004 sci-fi thriller film, titled The Final Cut.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
Alan Hakman is a young boy visiting another town with his parents when he comes across
a fellow child called Louis Hunt, who is constantly cleaning his glasses with his shirt and playing
with his necklace.
The two of them bond while playing together, and when they find an abandoned factory building,
they enter it to explore it.
After Alan crosses a wooden plank suspended high above the ground, he goads Louis into
doing the same, ignoring how scared he is.
Louis follows him but only makes it halfway before he loses confidence and falls, trying
to hold onto the edge for some seconds before hitting the ground.
Alan finds Louis' necklace stuck on a nail and takes it before going down to check on
Louis, who obviously is dead, lying on a pool of his own blood.
Crying and terrified, Alan runs away after scraping the blood off his shoes.
He leaves the town with his parents some hours later, not having told anyone about what happened.
Many years later, an adult Alan is working as a cutter, a man that specializes in editing
the memories of people into summarized biography videos called "rememories".
The footage comes from something called the Zoe implant: they put them in you as a baby
and record your entire life.
This has caused quite a controversy among many rebel groups, who protest in name of
their privacy and tattoo their faces to show where they stand.
Cutters have three rules: they cannot sell or give away the footage, they cannot have
an implant themselves, and they cannot mix footage from different people to do one rememory.
Alan is particularly well known for editing for controversial personalities Today, Alan
is showing one of his clients the demo of Mr. Monroe's rememory, who recently passed
away, and taking notes of the relative's reactions to know what works and what doesn't on a notebook
that has Louis' necklace tied to it.
After the client is gone, he goes through the footage again, finding the recording of
Mr. Monroe hitting his wife and deleting it without remorse.
Later in the evening, he meets with fellow cutters Hasan, Thelma and her assistant Michael,
who has a friend he wants to introduce to Alan for the job, but he reminds them he works
alone.
After Hasan tells the story of how a girl changed her life for the better after learning
she had the implant and people would see her life but ended killing herself anyway, Thelma
tells Alan she has a job for him: eye tech lawyer Charles Bannister has died, and his
widow is looking for a cutter.
His memories are quite disturbing, so Thelma couldn't accept the job, but this is right
Alan's alley, so he accepts it.
Afterward, Alan visits the bookshop where Delila, the woman he has a crush on, works.
He invites her over to his place after she closes the shop and shows her the special
computer he uses to edit the memories, called a "guillotine".
She's never been to a rememory, not even her ex-boyfriend's, because she wants to remember
him her way.
Alan shows her a special edit he's made using a man's footage in front of the mirror in
reverse, and Delila feels a connection to it because she has this recurring dream where
she's aging backward.
After discussing his job some more, Alan takes Delila to bed and they make love.
The following day, Alan interviews Mrs. Bannister to ask her what memories she would want to
be included in her husband's rememory while their daughter Isabel listens from behind
the door.
Next, he goes to Mr. Monroe's funeral, where a group of protesters has gathered at the
entrance.
Alan plays his edit for Mr. Monroe's family and friends, and while he's taking notes of
their reaction, he's approached by former-cutter Fletcher, who wants to buy Mr. Bannister's
memories for five hundred thousand dollars, but Alan turns him down quoting the rules.
When he's leaving the funeral, he sees Mrs. Monroe talking to a friend and remembers how
he had to cut out Mr. Monroe cheating on his wife with that woman.
The protesters hit him with their signs as he leaves the building.
After picking up Mr. Bannister's memories from the eye tech company, he puts it on the
computer to sort while he researches the man's life through photographs, news articles, and
his own notes.
While working on the footage, he finally discovers why he has been called for this case: he used
to molest his daughter, which he obviously cuts out from the film.
Then, while watching a memory of a party, he notices a man clean his glasses the same
way Louis did and makes him think it may be him, so he makes the computer search for any
other appearances of this man in Mr. Bannister's memories.
Then, he goes to see Delila to tell her about this discovery, but she's angry with him because
he hasn't called her since they shared a night together.
She thinks he spends too much time with the guillotine and that has screwed his way to
see life, so he leaves without telling her anything.
Afterward, Alan goes to see Thelma.
It's Michael who opens the door for him, showing he's been beaten up by protesters, and Thelma
sends him away so they can talk privately.
Alan tells her about Fletcher's visit, and Thelma in return tells him what happened to
him: Fletcher's sister's son died and she got obsessed with watching his rememory over
and over and wouldn't talk to anyone.
Shortly after that, Fletcher quit.
There are rumors that the anti-implant movement is led by a former cutter, and Thelma admits
she wouldn't be surprised if it was Fletcher.
It would explain why he wants to buy the Bannister footage: as he was the eye tech lawyer, they
can use it for anti-implant propaganda.
Since the computer is taking too long to search all the memories, Alan decides he should talk
to the family again to find any clues on Louis.
First though, he stops by a bar to buy a gun from a guy he knew he was there thanks to
some memories he worked on in the past.
Then he meets with Fletcher at the train station, where he tells him he considers himself a
sin-eater who brings redemption to the immoral.
After admitting he wants the footage to start a scandal on the news, Fletcher threatens
Alan by introducing him to a mercenary that works with him, Simon, but Alan simply ignores
them and leaves.
Using the excuse of research for the rememory, Alan visits Mrs. Bannister again to ask her
some questions, slowly leading to asking about Louis.
She has no idea what he's talking about, so he tries with Isabel next.
She doesn't want to talk about her father, but after Alan bonds with her by telling her
he lost both his parents when he was a child, Isabel accepts to tell him about the man he's
looking for: it was indeed Louis Hunt, a teacher of hers who died in a car accident a year
ago.
When he is about to leave, Isabel asks him to fix what his father will remember and delete
all the times she misbehaved, and Alan promises he will.
Desperate to find Louis, Alan calls Hasan and asks him for a favor: he has a cousin
that can let them in the eye tech company so Alan can search for Louis' implant.
While searching the boxes in the office, a guard almost catches them, but they turn off
their flashlights until he's gone, then it's back to searching.
Sadly, Louis didn't have an implant, but Alan makes an even bigger discovery: he has a Zoe
implant, and he never knew about it because his parents died before they told him, since
the recommended age to tell your kids this is twenty-one.
Alan steals the file and takes it home with him, where he watches the recording of the
salesman selling the implant to his parents.
Feeling incredibly upset, Alan punches his bathroom mirror then runs out to the streets
while having a panic attack.
Somehow he manages to give Delila a call, who comes to his place to take care of him.
They spend the evening watching footage he never showed anyone before: they're images
from defective implants that can't tell the difference between what the eyes see and what
the mind sees, so it records daydreams and hallucinations.
After Delila falls asleep, Alan leaves the building, unaware Fletcher and Simon are watching
him from their car, and goes to a tattoo parlor specialized in synth tattoos done in electrosynthetic
ink that creates a magnetic field that interferes with the Zoe implant.
Two tattoos are needed: one for blocking the audio and another one for the video.
The artist knows he's a cutter but accepts to do him anyway, and explains he doesn't
have to do his whole face, that's just people wanting to show where they stand on the subject.
Alan ends up with a small, simple tattoo for the audio on the back of his neck.
When he returns to his apartment, he hears noises coming from the guillotine.
Thinking someone has broken in to steal his footage, he takes out his gun, only to discover
it's Delila watching a compilation of her ex-boyfriend's memories of her that Alan has
kept for himself.
She finds this incredibly disturbing and gets even more upset when she sees he carries a
gun, so after slapping him, she grabs the weapon and shoots the guillotine, destroying
the Bannister footage before leaving.
He takes the broken implant to Hasan, but it's too damaged for him to fix.
Alan wants to use the one on his head instead, and when he hears those words, Hasan knocks
him out with a punch.
When he wakes up, Thelma is there too, and both she and Hasan are furious with Alan for
having brought an implant to their workplaces, which breaks the code and could get them in
big trouble.
Alan explains he didn't know he had it until recently and wants Hasan to access it while
he is still alive like he did with a client before.
Hasan explains it's incredibly dangerous and his client never recovered, staying as a blank
for the rest of her life, but he ends up accepting anyway when he realizes Alan will do it with
or without them.
At least with their help, he can still be alive by the end.
They put a condition though: he can never cut again after this, and Alan accepts.
They connect Alan's head to a computer, which won't record anything, it will just allow
him to watch, and he only has five minutes before it gets too risky.
The initial electric shock is quite painful, but Alan soon recovers and starts looking
through the footage.
After stopping for some seconds to see a memory of his parent's funeral, his first kiss, and
another one of himself in the mirror, Alan finally goes back to the day he met Louis
and is shocked to see how much his memory has changed through the years: after goading
Louis, he tried to stop him when he noticed it was too dangerous, and what he stepped
on later hadn't been blood, it was just paint.
He's so deeply touched by seeing this that he gets distracted and he doesn't remove the
wires from his head in time, getting another electric shock when the five minutes are over.
Luckily he's fine, and he thanks the other two cutters for having helped him find inner
peace.
When he returns to his apartment, he finds the door open: Fletcher and Simon are there,
looking for Bannister's implant.
Alan gives it to them since it's destroyed, and an angry Fletcher leaves after taking
Alan's notes with him, which is better than nothing.
The next day, Alan visits Mrs. Bannister to tell her that there was an accident and the
footage was destroyed.
She laments the loss aloud, but she actually looks quite relieved, even saying some things
are best forgotten.
This upsets Isabel, who rushes to her room to see Alan through the window leaving their
place - all this is being recorded by her own implant, so her mother is wrong: these
things will be remembered someday.
Afterward, Alan visits Louis' grave and leaves his necklace on it.
Fletcher finds him there and tells him that after hearing he isn't cutting anymore, he
did some searching, and found out Alan has an implant, which means he has Bannister's
memories in his mind.
He takes out a gun and chases Alan through the cemetery, missing his first few shots
and catching up on him when Alan trips.
To Alan's surprise though, Fletcher gains some last-minute mercy and shoots at the air,
only for Simon to suddenly show up and kill Alan himself.
Some days later, Fletcher is wearing Louis' necklace while watching Alan's implant footage,
searching for Bannister's dirty details as he promises Alan he is doing this for the
greater good.