Released 2004
Stars Robin Williams, Mira Sorvino, Genevieve Buechner, Stephanie Romanov, Leanne Adachi, James Caviezel, Thom Bishops, Mimi Kuzyk
Directed by Omar Naim

The ingenious concept behind Omar Naim's The Final Cut raises so many tantalizing questions—about morality, about memory, and about filmmaking itself—that it needed to be a great movie in order to be any good at all. A natural transition for the reality-TV generation, when everyone expects their lives to be filmed, Naim's not-so-distant future offers "Zoe implants," which are inserted into the heads of unborn babies, and then document entire lives from a first-person camera angle. When Zoe recipients die, their footage is handed over to a "cutter," who assembles the best parts of a person's life and presents a feature-length "Rememory screening" to loved ones at a wake. Of course, in doing so, the cutter has to edit out all the compulsive masturbation, spousal abuse, and other unflattering memories. And then there's the problem of Zoe implantees, who behave differently knowing that even their most private moments will be considered for posterity.

Summary from the Onion

Ok, here's what I would have done. First, lose the thriller part. It added a mundane plotline and took time away from everything in the movie that was interesting. Second, choose to either make a small, personal film about Alan Hakman's (what a terrible name!) guilt or make it about the larger privacy and social issues resulting from the Zoe implants. I would have chosen the first option with some of the second option in the background, but either way would have worked. The movie chose to give us all the setup for Alan's guilt trip, but the payoff was seriously under whelming. I suppose that was because it was too busy setting up some nonsensical thriller about trying to expose an Eyetech employee's life. I have no idea what that would have proved. That the cutters edited a person's film to show their best moments at their rememory? Isn't that what we do at wakes today? Do people get up and talk about what a bastard the deceased was? That's ridiculous, but what a great idea the Zoe implant is. I would love to have this video from my family's lives. What a wonderful gift, but the implant would raise many legitimate Orwellian questions. Had this movie treated this subject matter properly, this would have been a great film. Instead, it fell prey to the Hollywood machine, but it's still strong enough for a rental. --Bill Alward, April 6, 2005