inamerrata

Unlike some I’m a bit ambivalent about movie reviews — I tend to have a pretty low bar for finding them entertaining (Starsky and Hutch? AvP? Independence Day? Hollywood Homicide? Sure! Liked ’em all!), and a pretty high bar for finding them great. Which generally stops me from panning or lauding them, and if you’re not going to do one or the other (or both!) where’s the fun in doing a review?

Anyway, I’m not going to be as harsh as Kirk Honeycutt, but I can easily see where he’s coming from. The Final Cut ain’t no Eternal Sunshine, and it’s not even a Paycheck, but it’s not a bad way to kill an hour and a half.

Hrm. Spoilers below the fold.

The plot’s a bit disappointing from a sf perspective, though at least the setup’s fairly respectable: a fair chunk of people get “chips” put in their head before they’re born that record everything they see and hear for their entire life, that then gets edited and played at their funerals. In good sf tradition, the movie covers some implications from that.

And there are plenty — do you act differently when you’re on camera, and what does that mean if you’re on camera for your entire life? What gets dropped on the cutting room floor, who decides what’s worth remembering and what’s not? What does this mean for everyone else, knowing there’s a perfect record of everything you say or do to this person that’ll come out eventually? You could really draw that out if you wanted — what if someone on death row had one, and after he was executed, it was discovered he really was innocent after all? How would you cope if you were on the convicting jury? If someone with one was murdered, wouldn’t that make it a lot easier to catch the killer generally, so wouldn’t people want to get them as a deterrent? Would police want to mandate that everyone gets one so their job is easier? Wouldn’t it make an interesting addition to politicians’ biographies — sure we know what he said, but here’s what actually happened in the back rooms. Imagine a politician accused of shady dealings, corruption and kickbacks by his opponents, and the possibility that he can only regain his good name after his death, when his life’s record can be examined directly by the public. How about a politician who’s more successful after his death instead of an artist?

Unfortunately the movie chooses a pretty trivial path. It just uses it as a high-tech way of doing a funeral oration, and even ignores the obvious possibilities of implementing Orson Scott Card’s concept of a Speaker for the Dead presenting the facts of a person’s life without fear or favour. Instead it invents a priesthood dedicated to airbrushing everything bad from the deceased’s life. Why bother? For all the time the cutter’s put in, couldn’t you just hire some out of work actors to recreate some favourite episodes from the deceased’s life instead? And the rebellious youth who’re offended by the concept react by getting tattoos, protesting, and killing themselves. Thrilling. Apparently no one is game to live the life they choose, and then just voluntarily let everyone see it in its entirety: the tragedies as well as the triumphs. Maybe that would’ve been plausible before the age of reality TV, but it seems pretty naive now.

That’s not to mention various flaws in the movie’s execution — the implant’s undetectable, but easily extractable after death? Alan’s parents not only didn’t tell him, but didn’t mention it in their will either, and neither Alan nor their executor noticed the loan in their papers? And sure, we’ve had pre-natal brain implants for over 60 years, but highly paid, highly respected technologists can’t afford a fridge more modern than mid 20th century? I suppose I shouldn’t even mention backups or VCRs.

Paycheck suffered from similar flaws, although not as badly. The original story was really quite cool: the protagonist wasn’t a superstar, just an ordinary guy, who happened to be a little sneakier than your average joe. The trinkets weren’t snuck out; they were a legitimate contractual alternative — so the company got “defeated” in the tragic tradition: through their own hubris. There wasn’t even the silly movie ending, with the hero being able to deal with knowing the future, but everyone else risking a biblical apocalypse if the technology wasn’t destroyed forevermore. And the company wasn’t even your random evil corporate empire, but instead a family business trying to make a stand against a ruthless authoritarian government.

But hey, much easier to just do a “technology can be bad” schtick, and add some guns, sex and special effects, right?