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Next (2007)

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 4)

Two-Minute Stake

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Next on DVD

Nicolas Cage plays Cris Johnson, a Las Vegas stage magician that can actually see two minutes into his own future. Ordinarily, this allows him to win card games and duck bullets, but in Lee Tamahori's new movie, he moves onto bigger things. He must track down a girl who has been appearing to him in visions and he must stop French (!) terrorists from blowing up Los Angeles with a nuclear explosive. Based on a short story ("The Golden Man") by Philip K. Dick, the basic outline of the film is constantly intriguing, even if Tamahori and three screenwriters don't concretely establish the rules behind Cris' abilities. Sometimes he goes outside his two minutes, sometimes he sees visions within visions, and sometimes the visions are played for laughs. Besides that, Tamahori turns in a very sloppy production with shaky action sequences, junky visual effects, an ugly hairpiece for Cage and badly over-pitched performances. Julianne Moore co-stars as a snappish FBI agent who barks through her pages of expositional dialogue, and Jessica Biel is the girl in Cris' visions. Peter Falk appears all-too briefly as one of Cris' cohorts. Sadly, more people will probably see this than saw last year's excellent A Scanner Darkly, also based on a Dick story.

AskMen.com: Next

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel, Thomas Kretschmann, Tory Kittles, José Zúñiga, Jim Beaver, Jason Butler Harner, Michael Trucco, Enzo Cilenti, Laetitia Danielle, Nicolas Pajon, Sergej Trifunovic, Charles Chun, Patricia Prata, Jon Hughes, Jack Ong, Alice Kim Cage, Peter Falk
Written by: Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh, Paul Bernbaum, based on a story by Philip K. Dick
Directed by: Lee Tamahori
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, and some language
Running Time: 96 minutes
Date: April 27, 2007