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Nicolas Cage ... Cris Johnson
Jessica Biel ... Liz
Julianne Moore ... Callie Ferris

The only 2 things saving this movie from getting all pitchforks are the fact that the special effects are pretty decent and Jessica Biel is hot.

**This review will have spoilers in it**

Look, I like Philip K. Dick short stories as much as the next person and I didn't even mind some of the films that were made based off his short stories (Impostor, Paycheck, Minority Report (despite crazy tom cruise being the star), even Total Recall). I've never read this particular short story though.

The basic plot is that Cris Johnson is a Las Vegas magician who makes a modest living. He gambles though and his winnings have made the FBI aware of him. The problem isn't that he wins too much; it's that he wins the bare minimum every time and statistically, that isn't possible. One FBI agent thinks he can see the future and she wants his help spotting a nuclear device that the Russians have.

Sounds straight forward enough, yes? The problem is that he can only see 2 minutes in to the future and the FBI agent knows this. So I'm unclear as to exactly how she thinks he can be at all helpful.

The other problem is that the Russians know about him too and are out to eliminate him. Except we never find out how they know and why they want him dead.

The movie is going along at a fairly good clip and it's mildly entertaining until the end and then it suffers from what I call the Pam Ewing Effect™ (or PEE, for short). Pam Ewing was a character on an American nighttime soap called Dallas. During one of the seasons, a lot of shit happened and one of the things was that her husband, the very popular character of Bobby Ewing, died. Fans were outraged and so in typical soap fashion, TPTB brought him back to life for the next season. How, you ask? Why, they made the whole past season a dream Pam Ewing had. A DREAM!

There are clues throughout the movie that foreshadow the ending but the problem is that the majority of them happen during the part that you find out later is all a dream. If it's all a dream, how can you foreshadow during the dream?

I was all set to forgive the PEE™ had the movie maybe continued on and answered some questions (perhaps about the Russians or about why Cris can see further into the future when Liz is in his life) but it doesn't. It just ends with Cris riding off with the FBI agent and telling Liz he'll find her again.

Are you freakin' kidding me?! I was set to give the movie a 6 out of 10 until the PEE™ and then it dropped to a 4 out of 10 and then when I didn't get more of an ending, it dropped to a 3 out of 10.

I wouldn't even bother with this movie on DVD unless you really don't have anything better to do.

Posted by xinh at May 27, 2007 02:50 AM