Just after the 11 AM hour here behind Pacific Time in the Seattle area, which was about one hour ago, I finished watching on the Comcast subscription cable television service I have the 2001 film "Final" starring Denis Leary as the mental hospital patient who is the center of the story.
I had never even heard of that film. I have heard of Denis Leary many times. I had never heard of that 2001 film though. I would have never even guessed that was a film he had as a credit if I ever even saw the title listed.
So anyway, I read some reviews about it during the 7 AM hour or so as I was trying to decide if I even wanted to watch it and so I thought it sounded predictable for the year 2000. After a half-hour, I decided I wasn't going to watch it and then a short while later I did decide to watch it.
The storyline started off as I expected from the reviews and then I was annoyed to see that the actress who is the doctor of Denis Leary while he is confined as a mental patient has a notable resemblance to photos I have seen in the mainstream media of Hillary Clinton.
So that's annoying. No. Wait. That is predictable. The annoying part is how they reference so many times the red Ford pickup zooming through the gravel pit just as Bill Murray does in the 1993 film "Groundhog Day." So then that gets annoyingly predictable because that is racketeering propaganda as their criminal defense. The dialog even reinforces that they are creating a criminal defense because they know they are guilty of severe racketeering activity. The actress who portrays the doctor of Denis Leary espouses the conspiracy theories of government conspiracies and financial assets wasted just to fend off the legitimate court actions of one guy.
So the Hillary Clinton look-alike and of how my brother's wife is a medical doctor is predictable and then annoying but then they start showing her in the context of his delusional fantasy and that actress sitting there wearing the cheerleaders uniform is quite compelling because she does look really good.
The dialog continues and the story isn't really suspenseful except for the first few minutes and the last few minutes and it doesn't become suspenseful when I was watching it except for the ending because as his doctor is leaving the building I was wondering why some of the appeared burned out and then I wondered about how the ocean is close by and the part that is suspenseful is I wondered how he knew about the details about the ocean. Was he aware of those details while he was frozen or was he told about those details after he was unfrozen and there was a post-unfrozen period where he would forget he was told about information he then recalled in the short term after being unfrozen.
At some point well into the film I started thinking this was quite possibly the best film I have ever watched. Then I wondered about how I would even make such a decision. I think my enthusiasm about the quality of that production is biased because I believe there is something designed there that is specifically relevant to me.
I had hoped to find some references to the dialog to document but none of the usual sources I find on the internet have any transcriptions or scripts of that racketeering production.
So my final judgment of that racketeering production is that it made me think of how pathetic this country has become.
I think of how I am going to have to live with that judgment.
I think about those two suits who come into the conference room for the meeting and I think of how the actors who portray them, one of which is credited as "Official" while the other one is the guy in the white shirt and the yellow tie, have sort of a Neanderthal quality to them. The "Official" I can safely guess, considering the Hillary Clinton look-alike, is supposed to be based on the real-life moronic activities of Bill Clinton.
What that all made me think about is several lines of thought.
One is about the literal implications of how that storyline applies to me today in my current life and of how I have literally lived the equivalent of a living coma. I think about how I could be faced with the prospect of sacrificing my life to save people.
To save people.
Sacrifice my life to save Hillary Clinton.
Why the hell would I want to sacrifice my life to save the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
So that leads me to think about my career as an officer of the United States Marine Corps officer.
All you people have decided that Hillary Rodham Clinton represents you.
You the people of the United States of America have decided - TODAY - This day 22 October 2011 - and all those days before - and assuredly tomorrow - that Hillary Rodham Clinton represents you, the people of America.
Why the hell would I want to sacrifice my life to save the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
So what is this supposed to be? My resignation letter? I love being an officer of the United States Marine Corps.
Would I charge the machine gun fire of a beach somewhere knowing that I am risking my life to save the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277705/releaseinfo
IMDb
The Internet Movie Database
Release dates for
Final (2001)
Country Date
USA 8 June 2001 (Seattle International Film Festival)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277705/plotsummary
IMDb
The Internet Movie Database
Plot Summary for
Final (2001)
Bill wakes up from a coma in a hospital ward, raving about tissue regeneration experiments, final injections, organ transplants and having been cryogenically frozen. Battling flashbacks of his father's death and a car crash, occasional hallucinations and fits of rage he tries to piece together his own history with the help of Ann, a lonely medical psychologist sent in to evaluate whether he should be released. In their confrontational, sexually-charged sessions, Bill flip-flops between pitch-perfect self-diagnoses and his paranoid bio-tech fantasies, but slowly begins to heal. But things are not what they seem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/movies/film-review-he-may-be-institutionalized-but-his-delusions-seem-real.html
The New York Times
Movie Review
FILM REVIEW; He May Be Institutionalized, But His Delusions Seem Real
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: December 7, 2001
Campbell Scott's ''Final,'' which opens today at the Screening Room, is not an easy movie to characterize, and it is difficult to discuss without giving away the surprise that pops up halfway through, just when you thought you had figured out what was going on. Until that point, the movie is a vaguely Pinteresque dialogue between a psychiatrist and her moody, delusional patient, interrupted by flashbacks of the patient's earlier life. But then, just as the splinters of his shattered personality begin to yield a coherent picture of who he was, the boundary between delusion and reality shifts, and the movie ventures from the familiar terrain of doctor-patient psychodrama into hazy sci-fi allegory and ethical problem play.
In spite of the nimbly edited flashbacks, a play is what ''Final'' most often feels like. Its action consists mainly of indirect cat-and-mouse exchanges between Bill (Denis Leary), who is confined to a Connecticut mental hospital, and Ann Johnson (Hope Davis), his uncertain young doctor. The dialogue, especially in the early, coyly expository scenes, sounds overly written, though gradually Mr. Leary's scattershot energy dispels the staginess.
Over the years, Mr. Leary has honed the hyper-articulate, desperate aggression of his stand-up persona into a credible acting style. Here, he is utterly believable as a smart, troubled man, and in his interactions with Ms. Davis he bounces from charm to neediness to hostile sarcasm, keeping her off-balance and keeping the movie on its toes.
His performance and Mr. Scott's smooth direction help to soften the film's pretenses. The script, by Bruce McIntosh, is at once intellectually overheated and conceptually thin; it takes itself seriously without quite figuring out what it's trying to say. But the screenplay's nerdy, earnest sensibility -- which seems informed by a diet of higher-brow science-fiction writers like Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick -- is disarmed by Mr. Leary's truculent realness.
His character imagines himself as a prisoner of a future government that has unfrozen him to harvest his organs, and Mr. Leary rebels against the neatness of the story much as Bill revolts against the impersonal bureaucracy that confines him. That both struggles are doomed does not quite doom the movie. Mr. Leary's funny, angry performance is rooted in a specific lower-middle-class New England milieu, which Mr. Scott deftly fills in with subtle sensitivity.
Ms. Davis's role is a trickier one, since she must play both Mr. Leary's foil and a professional whose moral dilemma turns out to be the film's real subject. And as ''Final'' turns its attention from patient to doctor, the schematic machinery on which their relationship is built begins to push to the surface, and you are left puzzling logical conundrums and red-herring Important Questions rather than savoring the delicacy and intelligence of the acting.
''Final,'' shot on digital video with a spare blues soundtrack, was produced by the Independent Film Channel, and in some ways it recalls ''Spring Forward,'' which the same company released last year. The resemblance lies not in plot or theme but in the modesty and integrity of the enterprise and the way both films prize the words and gestures. (They also both take place in Connecticut.) Though its story is fuzzy, the acting and direction in ''Final'' give it an air of quiet, dignified ambition.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277705/quotes
IMDb
The Internet Movie Database
Memorable quotes for
Final (2001)
Bill: What year am I supposed to think it is? For my progress.
Ann: 1999.
Bill: Date?
Ann: November 2nd.
Bill: No, I mean, do you want to go on a date? Cause I know this darling place down by river...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277705/quotes
IMDb
The Internet Movie Database
Memorable quotes for
Final (2001)
Ann: Lie to him, then kill him? Why don't we just kill him?
Official: That would be illegal.
