REVIEW: “Final Cut” (2022)

By Keith Garlington

Source: Keith and the Movies

It’s hard to believe that it has been twelve years since French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius won his Best Director Academy Award for the Best Picture winning “The Artist”. While it has become somewhat fashionable in some circles to dismiss that brilliant 2011 film as unworthy, I still hold it in incredibly high regard as a delightful ode to a bygone cinematic era.

Hazanavicius’ latest film couldn’t be more different. “Final Cut” is a meta zombie comedy that is an open-armed tribute to cinema, a love letter to genre filmmaking, a celebration of creative collaboration, and just an all-around wacky piece of work. It’s a faithful remake of Shin’ichirô Ueda’s 2017 cult hit “One Cut of the Dead” but with its own French twist. It’s a consistently clever and routinely funny concoction that sees Hazanavicius and his all-in cast having the time of their lives.

Describing “Final Cut” to those who haven’t seen “One Cut of the Dead” is a bit of a challenge because the less you know going in the better. The film’s unorthodox structure plays a big part in making it such a fun experience. It’s a case of a filmmaker showing you one thing and then adding an entirely different perspective later on. I know that’s vague, but suffice it to say Hazanavicius has a field day playing with his audience’s expectations.

The spoiler-free gist of the story goes something like this. Romain Duris plays Rémi Bouillon, a frustrated filmmaker who signs on to direct a low-budget zombie short film for an upstart streaming platform that specializes in B-movies. But there’s a catch. The 30-minute single-take film is to be shot and streamed LIVE! It’s an unheard of undertaking but one the platform’s ownership has already pulled off in their home country of Japan. Now they want to do it in France.

Rémi is hesitant to take the job at first, seeing it as a doomed-to-fail project. But with the encouragement of his wife Nadia (Bérénice Bejo) and with hopes it will rekindle his relationship with his aspiring filmmaker daughter Romy (Simone Hazanavicius) he agrees.

Soon he’s on location dealing with a smug high-maintenance lead actor (Finnegan Oldfield), his inexperienced lead actress Ava (Matilda Lutz), a supporting actor who can’t stay off the bottle (Grégory Gadebois), and the demands of domineering producers who don’t prescribe to the notion of a director’s creative freedom.

As “Final Cut” shifts to the show’s production phase things get crazy and we gain an entirely new perspective on everything we’ve seen up to that point. Hazanavicius drenches his audience in blood, gore, and countless zombie horror tropes which is a big part of the fun. That said, it’s never the slightest bit tense or scary but neither does it try to be. It’s much more of a comedy, full of running gags, fun characters, an infectious B-movie charm, and a surprising level of warmth that I never expected.

Watch Final Cut on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/13547325