The Final Cut

Final Cut proved to be a viewable movie. Not because it was a good movie, but because the hero(Sam Elliot) was a terrible actor and completely out-of-shape for his "action-scenes". The movie is about a mad bomber, who`s destroying many buildings in the town. The city`s only hope is the retired bomb-expert Pierce(S. Elliot).

Sam Elliot is an unvoluntarily funny man. His dialogue is mistimed, completely useless and therefor a great laugh. He is also completely exhausted after running up some stairs and performing ONE kick. All the money seems to have gone in to paying all the famous actors for their 5 minutes presence in this movie. I recommend you to take a closer look at Final Cut, even though I don`t give it a good score, but it is just too funny to miss. 1,5/10

This is a pretty standard suspense/action kind of movie. There's a mad bomber on the loose in Seattle and the bomb squad calls in its retired former head John Pierce (played by Sam Elliott) to help out. But the bombs are so well made that eventually suspicion turns on to Pierce himself as the bomber. Is he or isn't he? And if he isn't, who is? In most respects this is unmemorable, and it makes extensive use of the cliche "countdowns" as the timers on various bombs are clicking down to zero. The performances were so-so at best. The ultimate revelation of who the bomber was doesn't come as any surprise at all. Basically what you have here is a time waster - that comes replete with a bizarre and completely unnecessary scene where Pierce is enjoying intimacy (shall we say) with a TV newswoman who has allowed herself to be handcuffed as part of the fun. I still don't understand why that was written into the script. It wasn't especially "sexy" and it really had nothing whatsoever to do with the story. I did find the last bomb to be unsettling. The movie isn't horrible. To be honest, I'm not sure there's much more to be said about it. (5/10)

A great fun movie. I ate most of my nails watching it. A cool ending. And a cool cast. What more do ya want!

A classic B movie, or what used to be called a B movie. These days, a B movie is called `made for cable' and is often shot in Canada with American stars and Canadian supporting actors---like this one! In The Final Cut, Vancouver doubles for Seattle (clever, eh?). We've seen all the pieces before: Mad Bomber plants explosive devices in densely populated locations and stymies the police bomb squad. Rugged, hard-boiled, world-weary, careworn John Pierce (Sam Elliott), former head of the bomb squad, reluctantly allows himself to be pressed back into service to stop the Bomber. Of course, he is framed as the Bomber himself, and in the process of clearing himself and catching the real bad guy, he must face some of his own personal demons. Sam Elliott is always watchable and this film is also graced by the presence of three beautiful women: Anne Ramsay effects a complete reversal of her role as ditzy Lisa Stemple in Mad About You. She is great here as the athletic, gun-toting, resourceful chick cop. She is allowed to get covered in perspiration in scenes that don't involve sex; how often does that happen in films these days? (Contrast The Matrix, in which Carrie-Ann Moss does incredible acrobatics without so much as breaking a sweat.) The gorgeous Barbara Tyson comes in like a lioness but unexpectedly almost disappears from view after some very hot early scenes; I wonder if some of her scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor. Finally, the lissome Lisa Langlois, who seems to specialize in victim roles, has another one here, as a human bomb. At least this time she gets to survive rather than being slashed, dismembered or incinerated.

This movie is just good enough to hold your attention till the end. It's ideal for insomniacs who watch cable at 2 a.m. in order to get sleepy enough to go back to bed.

Nifty little nail biter in which much of the cast gets blown to bits before the film ends. Doesn't really matter because there isn't one household name there. If you like high tech bombs with winking, blinking countdown devices, this is your film. (Nobody ever explained why the bad guys always wire up 5.95 Walmart digital clocks to their high tech explosives in these things.) However I take strong exception to two aspects. One is the lingering and needlessly explicit humping scene. This is a movie about bombs, people; not sex and handcuffs. If you like kinky sex, you probably don't want to watch things blowing up and if you do like seeing things blown up, you probably consider the bondage and the bonking a distraction. The other is the setting. The film was shot in Vancouver but set in Seattle. If they made the damned thing in Vancouver, why couldn't they have set the action there? When will Canadians demand that our cities stop serving as surrogates for American ones? I think we should demand that the CBC go to New York and use it for a movie about Toronto! Turnabout is fair play and all that...