Next (2007)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Blistering performances.

Great premise of a small-time magician who can see slightly into the future who gets dragged into a plot to prevent the detonation of a nuke. Starts strong with great, clever action and intelligent dialog particularly from Julianne Moore. Cage plays it mostly straight, not too over the top, to good effect. The whole thing is undone with a super cringey, unlikely and unnecessary romance featuring Jessica Biel. The chemistry is about as good as a 10 foot pile of sneezing powder and a leaf blower. Not to mention, Moore comes off far more attractive than the one-dimensional plot-filler Biel. Meanwhile, what exactly Cage's future-seeing powers will do to stop the nuke still isn't even revealed by the midpoint of the film, seemingly saving up a big twist that never really comes. Like so many Cage films you want to grab the screenwriter and smack him around a bit for having so much potential but then throwing it in the crapper. Oh well. I watched until the end but fans of Nic Cage and Julianne Moore will get value out of this one.

Having this concept in a movie where a person can se abit into the future and therfore should be able to get the best possiable outcome, at least in the short run makes me question everything he does in the movie and think that there must have been a better choice. When you think about it he should be able to crack any code or answer any question even if he dont know the answer. He just ses what random noise gives the answer. Several times during the movie I though that he must have seen a better future in a different action that the one he just did. Like the time in the casino where he just clumsy pushed the robber, or in the attack at the end where he let several agents die where he must have been able to get them to survive. This thinking got me to not be able to fully enjoy the movie. Then we have the leader of the agency who is searching for the bomb who just happens to se his fancy work in the casino and instantly thinks that he can read the future and puts all resources into finding him because he "definitely" is the key to finding the bomb. I am surprised that anyone listens to her and that she can keep her job.

Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) is cheesy Vegas magician Frank Cadillac. In his spare time, he wins small amounts at the casinos. He does this by seeing into the future by about two minutes. FBI agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) is tracking him hoping to use his skills for the government especially with a stolen Russian nuke on the loose in L.A. Cris uses his power to woo stranger Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel) who has a special connection and affect on him.The idea is intriguing and the movie does it well at times. It works to some extend until it does one of the worst cheating ending ever. There are problems even before the ending. It's the little things like Nick Cage's stringy long hair. It would be great to have an opening exposition of Cris' powers during his childhood. His 36 consecutive hours story is a good one to do. Jessica Biel is hot but him sleeping with her so quickly cheapens their connection. It's got good and bad until the ending. The end is simply a cheat.

Aprently it was an adaption of a short story by Philip K Dick "The Golden Men" which I have not read. So my review comes strictly from what I saw of the Hollywood story in NEXT staring Nicholas Cage as Chris Johnson a melancholy magician in Vagas who uses his power/ability or whatever you want to classify it of being able to see 2 minutes into his own future and see all of the deferent possible out comes. Early in the movie you are told that FBI agent Callie Farris (Julianna Moore) has discovered Chris's future seeing ability and for some implausible reason thinks he can help them locate and disarm a nuclear bomb that is going kill millions of Americans. Which makes little to no sense because this has nothing to directly do with Chriss future and even if it did how would a two minute advantage really help in this situation? For a reason unexplained Chris wants no part and doesn't really seem to care about all of the people who could potentially die and goes to pretty extreme measures to avoid helping the FBI which makes his character dispissable. With that being said the first escape scene is pretty intertianing to watch. After Cage escapes from the FBI and the opportunity to potinally save millions of lives he is on the hunt for a woman who he has been repeatedly dreaming of meeting and allows him to see even further into the future past his two minute limit. He waits for her in a diner and there is a clever scene of there first interactions played out into several different scenarios until he finds the right one that will get Liz (Jessica Beil) to allow a total stranger to jump in her Land Rover and drive to flag staff with her. They make a pit stop at the reservation she teaches at, which provides some beautiful scenery to the movie. They continue on in a cheesy forced scene where Liz somehow ends up passing out all the way over into the drive seat onto Chriss shoulder. Then the end up stuck staying at a motel where Beil is uncomfortable with Cage staying in the room, which a total normal reaction but all that logic is wasted as where in the morning she is totally fine prancing around naked in a towel in the same hotel room with him. Shortly after that Liz throughs herself at Chris and there is the obvious innuendo that they hooked up with out the sex scene which I'm thankful for because it was hard enough to believe that a woman like Jessica Biel would hook up with him man 18 years her senior like Nicholas Cage. Liz goes outside and is confronted by Faris and she tells him that Chris is a sociopaths and that he is very dangerous and she needs to drug him and turn him over peacefully to the FBI. Liz drugs his drink but then at the last minute has second thoughts and tells him about the drug in his drink and tells him about her encounter with the FBI agent. She ask the obvious question of why he is refusing to help which gives her the explanation that's just not how his powers work I couldn't help thinking come on man isn't worth a try to save millions of lives? I guess not I guess it's easier to plan the next ecape which ends up in the scene of a downhill avalanche and car chase which was pretty entertaining and had some OK CGI effects, but the continued extreme links he goes to avoid the FBI to not help all of these people just added onto my hate for his character. He is eventually captured by the FBI when he chooses to save Ferris's life the one redeeming action his character has. The FBI hook him up to a machine much like in the clockwork Orange making him watch news broadcast hoping he will get a glimpse of the detonation location. He instead see Liz with a bomb vest as a terrorist hostage. He uses his ability to ecape the FBI and is conveniently located across the street from where Liz is going to be blown up. He now and only now agrees to help Ferris save all of the millions of lives now that it directly affects his new love interest. There is a climactic scene where he now develops into multiple selves exploring multiple futures and pathways at the same time. And now show superhuman likability to dodge bullets in a matrix style fashion to catch the terrorist. With Liz safely in his arms Ferris has an look at a monitor to see if you can see when and where the bomb going to go off. He realizes that he is made a mistake in the bomb detonates and destroys the port in the entire city. *spoiler* Then in a painful plot twist Time reverts all the way back to where they were lying in bed together after their initial hook up letting us know that the entire two thirds of the movie that we watched did not happen but only was it foreseeing into the future. Ending with a cheesy line something along the lines when you see the future it changes... He leaves Liz asking her to wait for him and calls Farris and agrees to help her. But the problem with this is the terrorists already know who Chris is and obviously who Liz is and the second he walks away from her I suppose they would just walk in there and kidnap her all over again..a bit of a plot hole.