Next (2007)

A clairvoyant Las Vegas magician is tracked down by an FBI agent who believes his supernatural powers and wants to use them to foil an nuclear terrorist attack in LA. The weirdness and absurdity start with this brief definition of the scenario: a nuclear attack is imminent and instead of narrowing down on the threat with all of its resources, FBI spares a good deal of his task force to go after a person whose contribution to the solution is uncertain. The magician knows FBI looks for him for help to save the lives of some 8 million people, but tries to evade them for some reason which is not clear. If this doesn't sound weird enough the bad guys also go after the magician just because FBI looks for him but without really knowing why they need to. Indeed, the plot gives no clue for what the bad guys are up to, which depicts them all as cartoonish villains. Then, Jessica Beal joins in as the beautiful face of a romantic subplot which really doesn't add much to the story. J. Beal is gorgeous to watch but way too young and fresh to make us believe that she can't do better than a middle age man with a cheaply died, scruffy and thinning hair. A movie, especially one with some flavor of metaphysics and fantasy is for entertainment purposes and cannot be expected to follow the reality. However, the plot has to be coherent even in a fantasy world to sustain the attention of the audience. Nothing makes sense in this mess of a story. The action scenes are pretty typical with a cat and mouse game inside a warehouse, guns spitting fire in dust and smoke, dead people falling off rooftops and stairs, etc. Others involving a car, rocks, debris and logs tumbling down from hilltops look nothing more than a cheap, blatant computer animation even to an untrained eye. The pace is good but the flat and unconvincing acting matches well to the ludicrous plot and the ending is utterly childish and lame.

Until now, I had never seen a movie with an ending that made me get up from the couch and shout "NO, NO WAY" with the most anger a movie has given me, but here I am. The movie's plot is a winding road of nonsense, the characters are strange and the music is generic. Nicolas Cage's acting as usual is stellar but not for the reasons you'd expect, he's goofy and dumb and we all love watching him do stupid stuff. The way the cinematography incorporates his looks into the future is actually really cool, showing the camera pan slowly as he gets up and tries to talk to someone, failing, then the camera pans back to find him still sitting down thinking the situation over. They did a good job of implementing his ability. You can tell the movie doesn't take itself too seriously and just wants to have dumb fun. Probably the most entertaining Nic Cage movie I've seen. Give it a shot.

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.

This is possibly one of the dumbest most contrived movie plots I have ever seen... and that's coming from a guy that binge-watches shark-movies on a regular basis.All they had for this one was the idea of the two minutes of "clairvoyance". Then I guess they realized that wasn't enough to make a movie out of so... well they just threw in the most generic plot imaginable... and a nuke, I'm pretty sure there might have been a nuke involved. Not that you'd know or care by the time you finished watching the movie.The most original part was the end credits. I won't spoil what made them interesting though, something has to keep some mystery.