Final Cut – first-look review

French film­mak­er Michel Haz­anavi­cius is, it turns out, also a spe­cialised sur­geon, as what he has done to the 2017 Japan­ese sen­sa­tion One Cut of the Dead in remak­ing it is both to extract and dis­pose of its soul. On paper, you could pos­si­bly see a rea­son for exhum­ing Shinichi­rou Ueda’s inge­nious zom­bie-movie-by-stealth, and it’s clear that Haz­anavi­cius – mak­er of The Artist and Redoubtable – was clear­ly enam­oured with its mes­sage of cin­e­ma pro­duc­tion being its own kind of small miracle.

Now, with a hefty bud­get and a clutch of major French play­ers, we get Final Cut, a fun but entire­ly unnec­es­sary meta-frol­ic that com­plete­ly miss­es the fact that the entire point of the orig­i­nal was that it was made with change found down the back of a sofa. You’re sup­posed to be watch­ing this think­ing it’s a clapped-out Robin Reliant, but Haz­anavi­cius always makes the Rolls Royce chas­sis vis­i­ble in the margins.

To recap the plot: we are ini­tial­ly the audi­ence for a live, sin­gle-take, 30-minute zom­bie epic in which the mak­ers of a low-bud­get zom­bie film are sud­den­ly over­run by – you guessed it! – zom­bies. Romain Duris is extreme­ly game as the half-assed film direc­tor who prides him­self on work that is quick, cheap and decent, and is approached via wor­ry­ing­ly eccen­tric (and stereo­typ­i­cal) Japan­ese pro­duc­ers to remake the 2017 film with it hav­ing caused such a stir local­ly. Then, we wit­ness the mad­cap pro­duc­tion of the film, which is intend­ed to unlock the real dra­ma of film­mak­ing, which is the plate-spin­ning that occurs behind the camera.

Haz­anavi­cius has played this remake with a fair­ly straight bat, and retains the flash­back struc­ture of the orig­i­nal and the basic plot of the zom­bie movie they’re all mak­ing. One major stum­bling block is that it’s all too crisp and glossy to feel like an actu­al zero-bud­get zom­bie movie, so there’s a dis­crep­an­cy between the obvi­ous tal­ent and dis­cern­ment of the film­mak­ing team, and the com­i­cal­ly slip­shod and trashy images that we’re see­ing them make. You cer­tain­ly get the sense that the direc­tor isn’t mas­sive­ly au fait with the types of films that are being par­o­died here.

Where this also fal­ters is that Haz­anavi­cius has point­ed­ly made a com­e­dy, where­as the orig­i­nal was fun­ny by design. This means there are lots of goofy reac­tion shots and com­ic side­kicks, and even quite a bit of unwel­come toi­let humour, to pad things out and make sure this thing lands with as broad and audi­ence as pos­si­ble. While this scores some easy wins, such as one character’s trou­bles with booze com­ing back with a vengeance as cam­eras are min­utes away from rolling, the mag­i­cal essence frit­ters away and it’s way too easy to dis­miss the film’s true rai­son d’être.

It’s not a write-off by any means, and if we’re being char­i­ta­ble, it’s actu­al­ly one of the director’s most fun and arch­ly dis­pos­able films to date, but it cer­tain­ly lacks a wow fac­tor, and the whole endeav­our of a live zom­bie movie just doesn’t make sense in the west, espe­cial­ly in a coun­try like France which is known as maybe the most lav­ish and gen­er­ous when it comes to fund­ing for the Sev­enth Art.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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