A mad bomber is blowing up large chunks of Seattle and seems to have a vendetta against the city’s bomb squad.  John Pierce (Sam Elliott), a burn-out who used to be the best of the best when it came to defusing bombs, comes out of retirement to help with the investigation.  The only problem is that all of the evidence seems to be pointing at Pierce.  Pierce does his best to prove his innocence while more and more members of the bomb squad get blown up.

The Final Cut has its moments.  The lengthy opening scene features Amanda Plummer and John Hannah as two cocky members of the bomb squad who discover that defusing their latest explosive isn’t going to be as simple as they think it is.  The final 20 minutes takes the film into Saw territory, with an underground lair and a woman who has been turned into a human explosive.  In-between, though, the movie is often slow and Sam Elliott sleepwalks through a role that really demanded the low-budget equivalent of a Lethal Weapon-era Mel Gibson.  (Wings Hauser comes to mind.)  The actual identity of the bomber will be easy for anyone to guess though the bomber’s final fate is actually executed pretty well.

Director Roger Christian is a long-time associate of George Lucas’s and also worked on Alien as a production designer.  That’s probably why the sets, especially that underground lair, look surprisingly good for what was obviously a direct-to-video B-movie.  Five years after The Final Cut, Christian would attain an infamous immortality when he was the director unfortunate enough to be credited as directing Battlefield Earth.  Compared to Battlefield Earth, The Final Cut is damn good movie.