This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 11:38 am and is filed under Action, N, Science Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel,
Director: Lee Tamahori
Nicolas Cage is a pretty hit-or-miss actor for me. This was a miss and it wasn’t pretty. It is far fetched – unintentionally funny far-fetched and reaches the point of just being ridiculous. It reminded me of Face Off, which had the same buy-this-cause-we-say-so, kind of plot. If you were ok with the nonsensical story in that one, then this one may be acceptable for you, but you would also have to suffer through long action gaps in the first two thirds of the film. I hope you are seeing it for the story.
Cage is Cris Johnson, a funny-looking bad Vegas lounge act, who appears to be over-tanned and suffering from some kind of black hair dye disaster. Johnson has the ability to see into the future, but only for himself, and only two minutes ahead. These are the rules that the story works under and how this ability turns him into some kind of superhero is beyond me. It would work better if they added the line, “Oh, and also my brain is a super computer that can calculate all possible outcomes instantaneously (there can’t be that many can there?)! Aren’t I lucky?” So, anyway, Johnson is this superhero and Julianne Moore is FBI agent Callie Ferris, who figures that the only way she can stop generic terrorists from detonating a nuclear bomb in the Greater LA area is to pull in Johnson to help her. Since this doesn’t seem like a real easy thing to pull off, maybe if they put all of their Johnson-seeking efforts into the investigation they would not need Mr. Johnson’s unique skill set. I could go on and on. The premise is questionable. The execution is laughable.
I thought the movie was bad, but like Face-Off, some will enjoy it. See it once. See it twice if you like. I don’t have to have fortune telling skills to tell you that I won’t see it again. As long as my TV has a channel changer and in-flight movies are optional, I won’t be seeing Julianne Moore’s attempt at pulling Mr. Johnson into her investigation again.
