Next

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

"Do you believe this shit? A guy who can see things before they happen," says one of the cardboard characters in Next, a dopey sci-fi thriller that represents yet another new low point in the career of Nicolas Cage (The Wicker Man, anyone?). This time Cage plays a Vegas lounge magician who was born with the gift of seeing the future, but only for two minutes at a time. He is able to foretell events only in his own life for that brief period, and thus avoid seemingly endless close calls with death and destruction. The biggest hang-up is an aggressive FBI agent (Julianne Moore) who is on to him, and needs his talent for urgent matters of national security, particularly to foil an impending nuclear disaster in Los Angeles. He wants no part of her plan, and eludes the FBI's dragnet while also getting involved with a woman (Jessica Biel), who for some unexplained reason has increased his powers of clairvoyance well beyond two minutes. Something is severely lost in this film, a screen translation of the Philip Dick short story "The Golden Man." Action sequences are repetitive and boring, allowing little for Cage to do when in peril except roll over, duck, and get out of the way. Whoopee! The dialogue is hokey, and the film looks cheap. A variation on this gimmick worked much better in last November's Déjà Vu, which was no masterpiece, but at least made the incredible credible. As for Next, we will use our own powers of clairvoyance to predict a mercifully short life in theaters and a quick trip to the DVD shelves.

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