Say what you want about Nicolas Cage because if you don't I will, but one charge that will never be on the indictment at the man's crimes against cinema trial is that he doesn't have a sense of humour. Recently in Rob Zombie's Grindhouse trailer for Werewolf man of the SS, Cage was stunt cast for all of 7 seconds as oriental criminal mastermind Fu Manchu. That's not a bad joke you're saying to yourself but wait a minute, you haven't seen him as Frank Cadillac in Next yet! Unless you're allergic to laughter, and I mean badly so that any involuntary muscular contractions could aggravate your osteoporosis and snap your spine, you should be booking tickets as you read this because if there's a more ridiculous thriller this year, I'd sit in a chair with semtex strapped to my chest like Jennifer Biel and get blown to smithereens.
Very loosely based on a Phillip K. Dick story, in the same way that Michael Bay's Pearl Harbour was loosely based on historical events, Next is about a fifth rate Vegas magician who can see 2 minutes into the future. Handy, you'd think but someone, as we're told in an extraordinary expositionary scene featuring a very bad tempered Julianne Moore as the FBI agent on Cage's case, has stolen a nuke and they need Cage to find out where it'll be so they can get there far too late. Doesn't sound too bad does it? But Next plays like a distended spoof that schizophrenically imagines itself to be a serious movie. When Cage is on the run at the casino you're a liar if you've ever heard a government spook scream into his radio "gift shop, gift shop, gift shop!" before but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Cage lives with Columbo, here revealing where he went after he left the plot of Fracture and is obsessed with Biel, who allows him to see further into the future than the obligatory 120 seconds but crucially for Next's star rating, not her chest, that's covered by sheets that stay in place no matter how far in the bed she sits up. And who said movies were better than life? This loophole is exploited so that Cage's gift remains inconsistent throughout the film. Usually potentially plot stunting conceits are changed in sequels when they cause problems remember Highlander 2? No? Well thank Christ for that but here the 2 minute rule doesn't even last to the half way mark. Not only goes the period of Cage's clairvoyance shift as the story demands but sometimes it changes to the point where it threatens to scupper the entire plot. Without explanation Cage develops a gift to see multiple versions of the same two minutes to facilitate a few reheated Groundhog Day jokes but the screenwriters really hit their devil may care stride during the final third where, in one of the films many bonkers sequences, he develops the ability to split into multiple versions of himself and search an entire area a sort of two minute zone if you like. Could he have done this earlier and saved an hour? You bet, but maybe it was written in a kind of screen writers' guild version of the game where you write the first line of a story, fold over the paper bar the last line and let someone write the next part with hilarious results. This alone would explain the Dallas ending, in which disbelief isn't so much suspended to breaking point but fired and given two minutes to clear its desk. If couldn't be more ridiculous if Cage's character had imploded after eating a chocolate.
But good as Cage is, in an awful sort of way, it would be criminal to ignore the contribution of Julianne Moore. We may never know what Lee Tamahori said to her, the man who's directorial muscle went into spasm to produce Die Another Day but 'remember you're an aggressive, no nonsense FBI agent' might not be too far off the mark. That or Moore discovered her agent had negotiated a pay deal linked to gross points, just before shooting began, effectively meaning she was going it all for free. Whatever the reason, her scowl, fixed from the off and present to the bitter end is enough to melt steel. When she isn't looking at Cage as though she were about to chew through his joy sack, she's shooting at a cardboard target...really really hard and storming off after shouting at her bosses. She even looks depressed after Cage has saved her life. It's a nice gesture but letting her be crushed by some falling logs might have been kinder in the long run.
So Next is great fun, anchored by some poor plotting, unlikely romancing (would you really love a man who'd contrived to have you kidnapped and strapped to explosives by terrorists?) and pretty poor effects work but its nice to see the Amiga back in use. Go and see it, you owe it to yourself, not to mention that girlfriend you've been trying to get rid of but can't because you don't have the friggin' guts.
Very loosely based on a Phillip K. Dick story, in the same way that Michael Bay's Pearl Harbour was loosely based on historical events, Next is about a fifth rate Vegas magician who can see 2 minutes into the future. Handy, you'd think but someone, as we're told in an extraordinary expositionary scene featuring a very bad tempered Julianne Moore as the FBI agent on Cage's case, has stolen a nuke and they need Cage to find out where it'll be so they can get there far too late. Doesn't sound too bad does it? But Next plays like a distended spoof that schizophrenically imagines itself to be a serious movie. When Cage is on the run at the casino you're a liar if you've ever heard a government spook scream into his radio "gift shop, gift shop, gift shop!" before but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Cage lives with Columbo, here revealing where he went after he left the plot of Fracture and is obsessed with Biel, who allows him to see further into the future than the obligatory 120 seconds but crucially for Next's star rating, not her chest, that's covered by sheets that stay in place no matter how far in the bed she sits up. And who said movies were better than life? This loophole is exploited so that Cage's gift remains inconsistent throughout the film. Usually potentially plot stunting conceits are changed in sequels when they cause problems remember Highlander 2? No? Well thank Christ for that but here the 2 minute rule doesn't even last to the half way mark. Not only goes the period of Cage's clairvoyance shift as the story demands but sometimes it changes to the point where it threatens to scupper the entire plot. Without explanation Cage develops a gift to see multiple versions of the same two minutes to facilitate a few reheated Groundhog Day jokes but the screenwriters really hit their devil may care stride during the final third where, in one of the films many bonkers sequences, he develops the ability to split into multiple versions of himself and search an entire area a sort of two minute zone if you like. Could he have done this earlier and saved an hour? You bet, but maybe it was written in a kind of screen writers' guild version of the game where you write the first line of a story, fold over the paper bar the last line and let someone write the next part with hilarious results. This alone would explain the Dallas ending, in which disbelief isn't so much suspended to breaking point but fired and given two minutes to clear its desk. If couldn't be more ridiculous if Cage's character had imploded after eating a chocolate.
But good as Cage is, in an awful sort of way, it would be criminal to ignore the contribution of Julianne Moore. We may never know what Lee Tamahori said to her, the man who's directorial muscle went into spasm to produce Die Another Day but 'remember you're an aggressive, no nonsense FBI agent' might not be too far off the mark. That or Moore discovered her agent had negotiated a pay deal linked to gross points, just before shooting began, effectively meaning she was going it all for free. Whatever the reason, her scowl, fixed from the off and present to the bitter end is enough to melt steel. When she isn't looking at Cage as though she were about to chew through his joy sack, she's shooting at a cardboard target...really really hard and storming off after shouting at her bosses. She even looks depressed after Cage has saved her life. It's a nice gesture but letting her be crushed by some falling logs might have been kinder in the long run.
So Next is great fun, anchored by some poor plotting, unlikely romancing (would you really love a man who'd contrived to have you kidnapped and strapped to explosives by terrorists?) and pretty poor effects work but its nice to see the Amiga back in use. Go and see it, you owe it to yourself, not to mention that girlfriend you've been trying to get rid of but can't because you don't have the friggin' guts.