People are voting emotionally.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I have to say it doesn't start out pregnant with promise. An amnesiac, Denis Leary, is being treated in the private room of a Connecticut hospital by a psychiatrist, Hope Davis. Leary wisecracks a lot and there are flashbacks of memory. (Ho hum.) They can't leave the grounds but Leary and Davis walk around on the autumnal lawns and get to know one another, and we sense a bond building between the patient and his psychiatrist. Will she help him overcome whatever demons drove him into a state of amnesia? Will the revelation be a shocker? (Zzzzz.) But then, two-thirds of the way through, the character of the story changes completely into something resembling science fiction. There have been interpolated incidents in which Davis dons some kind of oxygen-breathing apparatus and visits her sister in another wing of the hospital, evidently suffering from one of those diseases that are always called "dread." The visit is distracting and pointless, until the movie approaches its end. I don't think I'll say more about the plot because there are surprises in it, some of which I couldn't get my head around.I've always liked Denis Leary -- rough voice, nothing face -- because he reminds me of a guy I met in a bar just off Pershing Square the night before I was to make a long sea trip many moons ago. Both Irish, both from Worcester. Leary might have been a fork lift driver or had some job that left his hands black with grease. He's an appealing actor, if not a powerful one.Hope Davis. Is that a WASP cognomen or what? She isn't striking at first. Her role as the psychiatrist who sheds some of her objectivity doesn't give her much wiggle room. But there is a wistful quality about her. She's a pretty blond with an endearing weak chin. Her features evoke an image of one of those little fishes just about to be eaten by a bigger fish. Yes, she could pass for a caregiver. Gradually, she and her character grow on you, and it's easy to see why Leary would become, not just fond of, but dependent on her by the very end.In reality it's a pumped-up two- or three-person play. Nothing dramatic happens. Nobody's head gets torn off. And the introduction, Act I, is sluggish. "Final" would have done nicely as an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." It's competently directed by Campbell Scott, George C.'s son.From the beginning, I kept wanting to get up and walk away but Hope Davis' quirky nose, not the plot, kept me in my seat for an hour or so, and when Leary starts looking for "The Alexandria Quartet" in the hospital book store, the film more or less had me. I mean, after all, here is a quartet that isn't a rock group. On top of that, Leary wants Frost's "Swinger of Trees" read at his grave, poem I used to read to my kid when he was about eleven. It became imperative at that point that I find out what the hell was going on.

Final provides a great movie-watching experience when considering it as an exercise - a self challenge by director, cast and crew to film a compelling story on a shoestring budget, and an attempt to show what you can do with great performers to showcase what no special effects will.Waking up in a hospital room (where most of the movie takes place), Bill Stark can't seem to decide if he's delusional, paranoid, or on his way to death row; he hears inexistent blues music, rants about having been cryogenically frozen, expects to be executed shortly, and gradually sifts through memories of the grim events that lead him to his current state. His only beacon towards sanity and truth is a mild-mannered and cryptic therapist, whose relation with her patient becomes too close for comfort, and slowly reveals that the insane man might not be so insane after all.The one thing that works against the movie is what it tries to attain - showing that a no-budget film can effectively thread on Kafkaesque territory as well as science-fiction. Pacing and intensity would be better achieved if it restrained itself and kept things more mysterious, as the shift from one genre to another two-thirds into the story feels like a let-down instead of a real dramatic twist.It does however succeed in relying on a surprisingly rich and nuanced performance by bad boy Irish-American Dennis Leary, whose journey to the inevitable whisks the viewer along with great interest. Even more surprising is the improbable yet strong chemistry with his co-star Hope Davis, whose un-eccentricity of character plays wonderfully against Leary's supped-up testosterone. The two actors are all the more impressive when given limited locations, and absolutely no visual effects, as they manage to paint the world they live in with livid and tangible colors.Definitely recommended for Leary fans to rediscover the man in a new light, and for aficionados of psychological, no F/X Sci-Fi the likes of "Cube" or "12 Monkeys".

Actually, there are no spoilers in this note, as there is nothing to spoil.I like movies where they make up what they are going to do as they do it. Sometimes the movie is working well, while other times you wish they would have written something out before turning the camera on. Maybe if they woke the actors up later in the day, the actors could have figured out more of a plot, since obviously the writers went out for a nice lunch somewhere far away from the set, and repeated calls to their cell phones for help were never returned. You never know minute to minute if the movie is ever going to go anywhere, or whether it ever might make sense. A suspense movie in that regard. I especially liked Hope Davis in this movie, as whatever plot development there was happened through her unspoken words. Not necessarily art, just good movie-making, anti-Hollywood.

... but better - thanks to great character acting from Davis and Leary. However, the movie is just too long for what it delivers: a 2 hour, 2 person talk-fest in which nothing really happens.This story involves a man who wakes up in a psychiatric ward / hospital and thinks it's the future and that he's going to be given a (final) lethal injection. The entire movie is basically about his interaction with his doctor in the patient room and hospital yard.The only saving grace of this movie is the strong acting performances by both Leary and Davis. Leary is very dynamic and energetic (it's actually very impressive) and Davis does outstanding counterplay as his restrained, even-toned psychiatrist.This makes them interesting to watch - to listen to. The memory flashbacks also help break up the dialog.However, almost NOTHING happens in this movie - it's huge talk-fest and the story could have been shrunk to 30 or 40 minutes max. If it weren't for the quality of acting (which induced me to think the movie may get better), I would have quit watching early on. In the final analysis, I also realized that I didn't even get anything out of the great performances beyond recognizing the skill of actors.If you're a Denis Leary or Hope Davis fan, you'll probably enjoy watching them act. For the average movie-goer, see something else.