NEXT

saw this on DVD last night

it's a Philip K Dick short story movified with Nick cage, Julianne Moore and Jessica Beil.

OK. Stop. Why the fuck would I watch yet another PKD hashup staring none other than the Ghost rider himself, that waste of talent Nick Cage? Well;

- there's a chance that Jess might finally get them out
- I didn't know it was based on PKD when I picked it up
- It was a slow day in the office
- I have low standards

hmm, so let's just say I wasn't expecting much. Let's face it Nick Cage can shine in the right role, even when that role is involved in a plot as proposterous as having your face swapped with a really fat John Travolta, but frankly he's far more miss than hit. Like I said, it had been a slow day.

Synopsis of this movie is that our hero (Cris Johnson, played by Nick) has a special talent, he can see 2 minutes into the future. He uses this to live a low profile existence as a Vegas Magician and card sharp. Doesn't sound low profile? well, it is; he goes to pains to keep it so, being a bit shit at audience interaction and not being too greedy at the tables. Cue the FBI (huh?) and they have a terrorist group bringing in a nuclear bomb. They (somehow) get wind of NC's talents and move to recruit him. The terrorists get wind of the FBIs interest in NC and move to snipe his face off. Meanwhile, NC has found out something intriguing about Jess Biel and moves to get in her pants. Cue NC and JB chase scene as they run away from the FBI and terrorists, although JB doesn't know this yet, she just seems to think they're off teaching indian kids on a reserve (huh?).

Compare this with the synopsis I found for the book which this is apparantly based on

Quote:

The Golden Man In the post-nuclear America, monstrous mutants roam freely. A government agency, the DCA, is formed to rid the world of mutants. But there is one of the new species that is not a monster: eighteen year old Cris Johnson. He is a perfect specimen of young manhood, an icon of masculine beauty. He is the golden man. But the DCA's fear that he might mate and produce a new race of golden men with survival skills far superior to ordinary men makes his destruction paramount

erm I think the phrase we're looking for here is "possibly very lightly inspired by PKD short story The Golden Man" or even "one of the producer's daughters once read the Golden man and thought Cris Johnson was a kinda neat name for a hero". Golden Man is one of PKD's stories that I haven't read, I'd be inteersted to hear from someone who has whether the FBI and nuke toting taroists figure in his plot.

OK, so let's move forward on the assumption that this isn't really a PKD hash-up at all and just that it's yet another almost-straight-to-video Nick Cage movie. In these terms I rather enjoyed it. Jess (yet again) completely fails to get them out and really is an awfully wooden, if pretty, love interest. The terrorists are your mean professional type and thankfully not your yashmak wearing mid-east stereotypes but instead seem to be mostly French, which was a nice touch. The ideology of their operation is never mentioned. Have a Bonus point.

The movie's plot is convoluted enough to have several commetators crying PLOT HOLE when they shouldn't have. Well, it does involve time, something which most of the viewing public wouldn't even recognise as a dimension. The plot hole that isn't involves our Jess and a spoiler so I won't tell you but it is fundamental to the movie and provides it with its ending, which I won't tell you either coz that would be spoilery too.

The really unexplained things for me are why in the hell the FBI, knowing that they have a nuke coming into the country, are concentrating on some loser in vegas who can see OMG... 2 minutes into the future ... and they have support and resourcing for this, rather than being told "WTF you cretins, get back on that fucking geiger counter and find the bastard bomb". The written movie backstory suggests that they had Nick in custody as a kid so perhaps they had a file on him, but that's not mentioned in the film and even then what are they going to do, wait until 2 minutes before the bomb goes off then ask him "what direction did the flash come from?" "sorry, I won't see it, my eyes were instantly vaproized along with teh rest of me" oops, 2 minutes up. Also, why would the terrorists know / give a fuck? Some explanatory footage missing here requiring a bit of

Acting. hmmmm. Jess is pretty wood. Nick does OK, but no better than normal, certainly not standout. Julianna Moore is very FBI, there's this one thing she does in the middle of the film which is wicked, but is more plotwork than acting so can't credit her really. Basically about as good, perhaps a bit better, than one would expect from a nick cage movie .. so not all that great really.

Effects are quite ropey. As one might expect from someone who can look into the future (if only a bit into it) Nick is able to use his abilities to get out of scrapes and some of them (one in particular) is set up in grand fasion, with our hero carreening down a canyon side being followed by a couple of hundred tons of runaway mixed farm equipment. IMDB does say that the overall budget was about 70M so perhaps they had nothing left after they bought the farm. In the last act, they do take the gloves off a bit with bullet dodging and that, but the matrix this is not and frankly these days it bloody should be.

In the end, I think that the plot is interesting enough to make it worth a view. The explainations of some major plot points (especially the one which had IMDB critics crying foul) are not rammed down your throat, but they are there. Worth a rainy night in.

Quite frankly though, I want to see the original with mutants and monsters and everything. Maybe Jess would finally get them out then?