Final Cut (Rental) (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Biographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Biographies-Cast Filmographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer-4x3, Full Frame Trailer-Firetrap, Tunnel, 4x3 Full Frame DVD-ROM Extras-Script
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	89:22 (Case: 93)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Dominic Anciano
Studio Distributor	Rising Star Entertainment	Starring	Ray Winstone Jude Law Sadie Frost
Case	Soft Brackley-Opaque
RPI	Rental	Music	Feelybooth Thierry Lang

    If you are one of those people that loved Survivor or for whom Big Brother was 'must see' viewing each night then you will probably like Final Cut. For me, this smacked far too much of Reality TV for my liking. Okay, I admit there were some slightly humorous moments but the trite and minimalist plot, the over-the-top acting in a lot of cases, the shaky cameras, the endless chopping and changing of scenes, and the camera on camera on camera approach really had me squirming in my chair at times.

    At one stage I almost began to believe I was back watching one of Andy Warhol's experimental movies that did the rounds in the 70s (and they were bad). I suppose you could call this 'experimental', but you could also be a total cynic and call this self-righteous clap-trap. I'll let you decide should you decide to watch it, but be warned, there is a voyeuristic mind-set that dominates this movie that may not for everyone.

    Jude has died (Jude Law) and his wife Sadie (Sadie Frost) holds a wake in which all his friends gather around to pay their respects. A camera crew records the gathering and during the bereavement Sadie asks that Jude's last wish be honoured, the watching of a particular video tape.

    It seems that before his death, Jude had been using hidden cameras to secretly record the lives of his friends and was making a movie about them. He caught on camera all their lies, their cheating, their deceptions, and assorted sordid details that most people would prefer never to have seen the light of day.

    Cameras are hidden in toilets, bedrooms, taken with him to the pub (which does provide one of the few humorous moments in the movie), hidden in walls, in bags, basically anywhere you can think of in order to record the lives of these people (can anyone say Big Brother here?). Added to this, Jude deliberately provokes situations and then records the results and you have the outline of what I consider to be a fairly torpid movie that rarely rises above the mundane. There is copious profanity, coke sniffing, panty sniffing, some heavy overacting, and mindless and troubling violence interspersed into what is almost certainly an ad-libbed script.

    If you are a fan of Reality TV then you'll probably be used to this sort of thing, except this definitely has less of a plot than most of the Reality shows. The ending was different if not a little surprising, but all-in-all I really struggled my way through this, however I'm quite sure many of you who take the plunge may find this more interesting than I.

Video

    Copious use of hand-held cameras make for some very shaky shots (the camera crew recording at the wake). Most of the cameras are pre-placed and static, but you end up with lots of shots of half-heads and noses because the cameras don't pan around and you can only see what was in shot at the time.

    The transfer is in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 Full Frame and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    This has to be the grainiest film I've seen in ages, so much so that it does diminish many of the other features. The sharpness can be described as very soft at best, with copious amounts of edge enhancement really showing through at times. At 48:33 you can see what I mean with the guy in drag exhibiting almost total body enhancement! Fine detail is also non-existent in many shots. Shadow detail fares little better being fairly poor without much depth on offer. The one redeeming feature is that low level noise didn't appear a problem, although with the amount of grain on display it would have disguised it most times.

    The colour starts off fairly reasonably. The palette was adequate for the job without being vibrant. Then, colour starts to red shift at around 48 minutes in, with skin tones getting that red tinge about them. Up until then, there was no oversaturation or colour bleed on offer.

    There were really only two minor blemishes in regards to film artefacts. The first was some minor film artefacts noticed at 3:05 and at 107:33 and the second was a dirt mark on one of the static cameras at 42:00. Apart from this, the transfer was almost totally free of other defects.

    There were no subtitles provided on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The overall soundfield of this movie is located in the front speakers, and being a dialogue-driven movie, was adequate for what it was despite lacking any great body or depth.

    The only soundtrack on this disc is in English, Dolby Digital 2.0 and this is what I listened to.

    Given the nature of the movie, neither the dialogue nor the audio sync were a problem.

    The music is provided by Feelybooth and Thierry Lang, neither of whom I'd heard before. It was to be found predominantly at the beginning of the movie, in between certain scenes and at the end of the movie, leaving the intervening periods devoid of everything except the background sounds and speaking. An interesting idea that worked well within the construct of the script. The music was made up entirely of rock songs and there was no 'theme' music to speak of.

There was no surround or .1 channel usage in this movie.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Audio & Animation

Biographies-Cast & Crew

Filmographies-Cast & Crew

Trailer

    There are 3 trailers on offer:

1. Final Cut - 1:30
2. Fire Trap - 1:47
3. Tunnel - 1:32

    All three are cut together but offered as unique trailers on the menu. The overall running time is 5:19. They are all displayed in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

DVD-ROM Extras

    I can find no R1 release of this disc at this time.

    Basically I didn't like Final Cut. You may - that's the beauty of individuality. The movie may well have some redeeming features - I just couldn't see any at the time of my reviewing it.

    The video quality is mediocre at best.

    The audio is slightly better than the video but it still isn't great.

    Considering that this is a Rental Only release at this time, the extras are above average.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall