Final Cut

Another futuristic flick with a brain, and like its kin this movie asks its audience to think ethics. If humans were implanted with a device that recorded video of all they ever saw, who would have the right to view and ultimately edit those tapes when the person had died? Robin Williams, who seems to be much more suited to serious roles than his tired comical types, plays a 'cutter' who is so good at creating rememberances of peoples' lives with all the bad bits taken out that he doesn't notice that he is rewriting history. Until, that is, his own past comes to haunt him and he has to find out the truth about his culpability in the death of a childhood friend. Whilst the film doesn't ask you to think that hard (there is truth, after all), it nevertheless questions the value of our camcorder world versus personal memories and the freedom we maintain to remember or forget. Perhaps forgetting is key to the moral of this film, rather than remembering, but when atrocities are forgotten then justice may also be abandoned. This is more Gattaca rather than The Truman Show, and Williams puts in a suitably moody performance (as in Photolab). Worth a gander.