This 2007 film is a mix of many things: scifi , romance, and political thriller. It's loosely based on an old short story by Philip K. Dick. Many of its sci-fi tropes were exhausted by the film industry long before 2007.
Cage plays Cris Johnson, an intentionally bad stage magician with clairvoyant abilities. The FBI figures him out, and they need him to save Los Angeles. Cris can tell everything about his (current) future, except for the parts that involve a certain love interest, played by Jessica Biel. She does a reasonable job acting, considering the blankness of her character.
Character three is a one-note, hard balling FBI agent, played by Julianne Moore. I'm preconditioned to like her despite my natural aversion to law enforcement. The Dangerous Milf always wins, tearfully gripping her nine millimeter. To further prove her competence, she uses her phone's speed dial. Aside from these traits, we don't know anything about this one dimensional character who actually drives the story.
Since this dive into Nicolas Cage's filmography keeps pulling me deeper, I need to thus get deeper in these critiques. Cris Johnson is our protagonist, and we are supposed to like him and think he's cool. However, Hollywood often fails to sell us on the winning traits and personalities of their heros. In fact I'm often annoyed by the values they expect me to buy into. But maybe our real hero is the vanilla love interest... Yeah right.
Why should I expect anyone to use effective communication to solve their problems when they could engage in disastrous action sequences? Cris's clairvoyant powers really make a difference in his capacity to kick butt and escape death. If there is any aspect of quality in this film, it lies with the action scenes.
I hate to be a spoiler, but the story of Next never resolves itself. Despite its teasing flavor of hard scifi with good practical effects, Next is a bad, incomplete film. It shouldn't have been made.
1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. Birdy
5. Wild at Heart
6. Color Out of Space
7. Peggy Sue Got Married
8. City of Angels
9. Gone in 60 Seconds
10. Matchstick Men
11. Vampire's Kiss
12. Face/Off
13. Honeymoon in Vegas
14. The Family Man
15. It Could Happen to You
16. 8mm
17. Ghost Rider
18. Next
19. The Weather Man
20. The Croods
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