"Next" is a Movie that Cheats: a DVD Review

There is often a reason that a movie is not screened for critics. That reason is usually that the movie sucks. Every so often, although it is exceedingly rare, you find a movie that has some merit that has not been screened. I would love to tell you that the Nicholas Cage vehicle about a psychic who can see two minutes into his own future is one of those. "Next", however, is not one of those movies.

Cage plays a man born wih the ability to see into his own future by two minutes. He is the star of an act in Vegas where he does cheap sleight-of-hand and then does his psychic thing to everyone's amazement. He passes his true abilities off as tricks, and then he sits down at the blackjack tables or walks by slot machines and hits the winners.

There are some interesting scenes here. The rules of how his abilities work are established early on, and then followed pretty closely. When the casino suspects he is cheating, it is very cool to see how he gets out of the place, timing his moves so that he is always just out of view by security. This is something we see happen again and again.

Julianne Moore shows up as an FBI agent tracking down terrorists who have smuggled a nuclear device into Los Angeles. She believes that Cage's character can help despite the fact that she figures out, and he tells her, that his powers only work two minutes into the future and only when they directly affect him. She still spends countless man hours and expenses chasing him down.

Jessica Biel looks as lovely as ever as the love of Cage's life. For some reason, when it comes to her, he can see further into the future than he ever has before. Her character, however, doesn't have much to do except look sexy and then end up as a damsel in distress.

Some of the special effects here look startlingly cheesy. There is a scene involving a freight train that looks so computer generated it might as well have been part of a video game. This is a movie that plays more like the pilot to what could be an interesting TV series.

However, this is not a TV series. They have attempted to make a movie here and, therefore, make it all self-contained. As such, something happens right at the end of this movie that, I feel, cheats the viewers. It cheatst them badly, made me scream at my TV screen and want to throw the DVD into my microwave.

Up until that point, this was a movie worth renting, downloading or catching on cable. With that ending, though, this is a movie that you should watch, right up until the last five minutes and then stop.