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Next (2007)

The movie is called Next because the main character, Cris Johnson a.k.a. Frank Cadillac, played by Nicolas Cage can see exactly two minutes into his future. Johnson is sought by an FBI agent named Callie Ferris, played by Julianne Moore, who wants him to help her track down a stolen nuclear bomb using his unique gift for "precognition." He does not want to do this and spends a good part of the movie dodging the FBI team tracking him. Then he meets a young woman (a woman young enough to be his daughter and this bothers me) named Elizabeth Cooper, played by Jessica Biel, and it's love or romance or whatever. The important thing--the thing that draws Johnson to Cooper--is that when they're together, he can see much further into his future than two minutes, and he wants to know why. In the end, Johnson must help the FBI to save the woman he loves. Johnson chooses a course of action that will presumably protect Cooper from all contact with the bad guys who are also onto to Johnson's gift and do not want him to use it to thwart their plans for the nuclear bomb and world destruction.

This movie... I'm not sure what to say about it. Wait. Yes, I do. Cage's wig or weave or whatever he was wearing on his head bothered me throughout the entire film. And every time I saw Cage and Biel together, I thought "she is way too young for him." Couldn't they have found a more age appropriate actress to play Johnson's love interest? Or maybe a younger actor to play Johnson? In the end none of this matters because they cut off the movie right in the middle of the movie. This is what really (really) bothers me about the movie: the ending. In many cases, the ending can make or break a book, a show, a movie for me. How a book ends can haunt me for days, weeks, months, years. It is how I remember a book--the impact of a story and the author's writing and the impact of an ending and how the characters survived or didn't survive. This movie's ending irritated me and when something irritates you, it's never a good thing.

This DVD is available upon request from Annville Free Library and Lebanon Community Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie
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