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| Robin Williams looks lost and uncomfortable on this inauspicious poster for Omar Naim's The Final Cut |
In a future where devices record people's entire lives, Alan is a 'cutter' whose job it is to make uncritical edits of deceased people's lives. But his new, unsavory client gets him into danger.
A team of talented people are involved in this little-seen b-movie. Robin Williams (What Dreams May Come True (1998)) is good in the lead, and the set design, photography (by Tak Fujimoto (Gods Behaving Badly (2013))) and score (by Brian Tyler (Brake (2012))) are all professionally done.
The idea behind The Final Cut is interesting, but unfortunately it results in a rather banal story here. The film is written and directed by Omar Naim (When Simon Sleeps (1999)). It comes off as a somewhat sexless sci-fi thriller, which attempts to raise some issues that it can't quite handle persuasively in the end.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 3.6 mil. $
= Uncertain - but likely a huge flop
[The Final Cut premiered 11 September (Berlin International Film Festival) and runs 95 minutes. Shooting took place in British Colombia, Canada and in Berlin, Germany from June - August 2003. The film opened and peaked at #27 to a weak 227k $ first weekend in 117 theaters in North America, where it grossed 548k $ (15.2 % of the total gross). The biggest market was Italy with 1.1 mil. $ (30.5 %). 2nd biggest was Spain with 586k $ (16.3 %). North America was the 3rd biggest. - If the film was made for a very modest 5 mil. $, it should be counted as a huge flop. - It could easily have been higher, in which case it may have actually been a mega-flop. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this one. Williams returned in House of D (2004). Naim only returned six years hence as co-director of the PBS documentary Stand Up: Muslim-American Comics Come of Age (2009) and then theatrically with Dead Awake (2010). The Final Cut is rotten at 37 % with a 5.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Final Cut?
