Dir. Lee Tamahori, US, 2007, 96 mins
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel
Review by Carol Allen
You almost wonder why the film's writers bothered to obtain the rights to Philip Dick's short story "The Golden Man" which they have set in the present rather than the future and turned into an action thriller with a sci-fi premise. The premise itself though is intriguing. Cage plays Cris Johnson, a man who can see two minutes into the future and by trying out the various choices that gives him, change its outcome. He hides his gift by working as a magician in a Las Vegas casino - "the real thing disguised as an act", he tells us - where he also supplements his income using his ability in a fairly inconspicuous way at the gaming tables. However FBI agent Callie (Moore) has sussed that Johnson's precognition is for real and she wants to force him to help her in tracking down a terrorist group, who've hijacked a nuclear weapon from Russia and are planning mass destruction on Los Angeles. Cris however, who can only see into his own future, doesn't want to play, particularly once he's found Liz (Biel), whom he's seen and fallen for in a futuristic vision, and one which shows his powers can extend further than two minutes, where she's concerned. Remember that bit - the plot depends on it!
The film has a number of good things going for it. The "two minute" premise comes up with some fun ideas, like when Cris first meets Liz for real and experiments with the outcome of various lame chat up lines and later, when he's finally given in to Callie's brutal recruitment techniques and there's an impressive, video game style sequence of multi versions of him searching in a warehouse for terrorist booby traps. Director Tamahori gives us some impressive action sequences - a good car chase with alternative outcomes and a sequence, where Cage is fleeing from the FBI under an avalanche of logs. It also at times touches with what might be unintentional irony on the real world. When the tough, unsmiling Carrie is using her bullying techniques to force Cris to look into the future, she answers his protests with the argument that it's "in the interests of preserving our freedom, there are larger issues at stake". "What about my freedom?" he asks. Could almost be an exchange between the Bush administration and the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
The film does however suffer from some really clunky, on the nose dialogue with regard to the terrorist plot and we never find out what the terrorists themselves, a cliché, under characterised, multi European group with vaguely Russian accents led by the charismatic Thomas Kretschmann, are hoping to get out of their mass destruction enterprise. The complicated plotting sometimes loses its way a bit and the dénouement may be seen by some people as a bit of a cop out. But the film's entertaining enough while it's on screen and at 96 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome.
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