Movie Review: Next

A Las Vegas magician (Nic Cage) who can see a few minutes into the future is pursued by FBI agents seeking to use his abilities to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack.

First, let me get this out of the way. Jessica Biel is smokin' hot and young enough to be Nic Cage's daughter (18-year difference), so their whole love affair thing sort of creeped me out. I threw up in my mouth just a little bit when they swapped spit. Maybe it was a jealous regurgitation? Anyway, now on to the film.

Nothing terribly new or fresh, it's sort of Groundhog's Day with some action worked in, but I thought that as an action flick it didn't really have much (or enough) action. Also when it tries to be clever it only worked about half the time for me. I think it walked the line between clever and stupid (which is a thin line) too often and basically just got confusing. I could ask so many questions, but pretty much had to just disengage my brain to enjoy it. That's nothing new, hell I do that all the time in movies. I just hate going "huh?" every 5 minutes throughout a film, unless it all comes together in the end to really make sense.

The action that was present was pretty good and there were some good tense scenes that had me on the edge of my seat. I think it could have benefitted from being a little longer really. They could have explained more and probably needed a few more big action scenes. We learn nothing about the terrorists really. Lasty, I won't ruin the ending, but I hated it. It felt abrupt and left me doing some head scratching.

The entire plot is pretty preposterous and illogical but it's still sort of fun in a popcorn flick sort of way. Ignore some plot points, Nic's really bad hair and his May-December love affair and you're all set.

5/10