DVD review (region 1 & 2)
Directed by Lee Tamahori
Starring Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel, Thomas Kretschmann
Release date Out now

Las Vegas magician Cris Johnson has the power to see into the future. The FBI want to use his ability to avert a nuclear bomb going off, while a terrorist gang want him dead…

Somehow Next takes an intriguing Philip K Dick story and turns it into a poor man’s 24. There’s a nuclear bomb in LA! Can Cage use his mysterious ability to beat the terrorists and rescue his kidnapped lover before it’s too late? You don’t need to be a clairvoyant to predict the outcome.

From the drawn-out scenes of exposition to its cardboard cut-out baddies, Next is a plodding, deeply unambitious sci-fi action thriller. It’s easy to forget that New Zealander director Lee Tamahori was the man behind the masterful Once Were Warriors, as his subsequent career has seen him take on such anodyne efforts as Die Another Day, Along Came a Spider and XXX: State of the Union. Next is his most personality-free movie to date.

It’s sad to watch the usually excellent Julianne Moore languishing in the cornball role of a purse-lipped, no nonsense FBI agent, and you’ve got to wonder why the film-makers bothered to wheel Peter Falk out of retirement for his one useless scene. Biel does her best in a role that requires her to do little more than look cute wrapped in a bath towel or look worried as she’s strapped with explosives, and Cage makes for a charismatic enough hero, reigning in his pantomime excesses. But it’s not enough to rescue a movie filled with cheap-looking CGI, cheap sentiment and cheap plotting. Next! Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 4/10
By-the-numbers Hollywood actioner.