Tried and Tested

Next
Directors: Lee Tamahori
Writers: Gary Goldman, Paul Bernbaum, Jonathan Hensleigh
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel
Genres: Action, adventure, sci-fi, thriller
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 96 minutes
Seef Cineplex II  at  11.45am, 1.45pm, 4.15pm, 6.45pm, 9.15pm and 11.45pm

Even with its twist ending (don’t worry – no spoilers here!), veteran action director Lee Tamahori’s adaptation of Philip K Dick’s short story The Golden Man is just another predictable sci-fi thriller.
Hollywood’s hardest-working Oscar winner – Nicolas Cage, in a ridiculous hairstyle that nearly rivals Tom Hanks’ Da Vinci Code ‘do – plays Cris Johnson, aka Frank Cadillac, a small-time Vegas magician. But Cris’ on-stage guesses are no act: He can miraculously see exactly two minutes into the future. Not two hours or two days, two minutes – about enough time for most of us to figure out whether the light’s going to turn red or who got booted from American Idol before everyone else.
Cris uses his unusual skill to wow his fans, win big at Black Jack, and pique the interest of ambitious FBI agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore), who needs immediate help stopping a group of foreign “bad guys” from detonating a nuclear device on American soil.
If that doesn’t sound 24 enough – think of Cris as a kinder, gentler, slightly more clairvoyant version of Jack Bauer (minus the guns) – there’s also a romance thrown into the mix.
Jessica Biel, whose beauty is quite riveting, co-stars as Liz, whose face showed in Cris’ visions much more than two minutes early.
Some of the movie’s fast-forward sequences are funny and impressive, but a few are plain ridiculous. And while the “big twist” finale is entertaining, it’s not all that shocking – nor particularly satisfying, which pretty much sums up Next.
- Sandie Angulo Chen