Next (2007)

I was eager to see how Next carried off the special effects and basic premise of a man who is able to see 2 minutes into the future. I was not dissatisfied -- at least, not as bleakly as so many others seem to have been (judging by their whining complaints, which are baseless in my opinion). First, I love Nicolas Cage in City of Angels (for his doe-eyed empathy), Bringing Out the Dead (for his quirky twitchiness), and even Ghost Rider (for his twitchy quirkiness). In Next, he's playing quirky, people -- what do you care if he sports a worse haircut than Anton Chigurh? Does his lack of hair -- or the admittedly shaggy-dog ending -- somehow disqualify the entire movie (as some imply by their one-star ratings)? Second, I have enjoyed Julianne Moore in The Lost World, The Fugitive, and The Shipping News. In Next, she was as sawed-off and ballsy as I expected a female FBI agent to be (and I have known one). What part of kickdown-and-cap do you not understand about her scene in the firing range? Third, Jessica Biel has remained off my radar screen until now, however, since she is not required to emote on an Oscar-worthy scale in Next, I'll just say she ably fills screen real estate as the leading man's dewy-skinned love interest. Since Nick's character has had the ability to see forward into time since birth, it's not necessary that his ability (or his destiny) be explained. (The basic idea of science fiction is that you accept a given idea or premise so that the rest of the story can develop.) I'm also fine with figuring out for myself, instead of requiring it to be explained for me, why Jessica's character helps him to see further into the future. (Anyone read about philotic tendrils in Orson Scott Card's Xenocide? No?) So the special effects are not perfect -- whose is? They carry the story for me just fine. More than being able to see two minutes into the future, however, Nick's character is actually required to multitask to the nines because every two-minute span has 120 seconds to track against real time -- in his head since constantly checking one's watch while doing a tuck-and-roll isn't practical -- and that's not even counting when he begins tracking several and as many as two dozen branching timelines simultaneously. Furthermore, when he perceives and abandons a given timeline as lethal -- did he die but then roll back time (like a "do-over") or are we seeing his perception instead of (or in tandem with) what's happening in real time? These are minor questions that no one else seems to have mentioned but they (more than Nick's hair or the fresh-slate ending) do not disqualify the movie on a wholesale basis for me. On the contrary, they are what made it most interesting. 4 stars.