...the filmmakers are content to give us characters who are one-dimensional and plot events that are without rhyme or reason.
Along the way, Johnson meets a beautiful girl, Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel), and she becomes a romantic interest in the story, as well as a damsel in distress. I mean, you've got to have a beautiful romantic interest in distress, even if she has nothing to do with anything else in the plot. It's like Peter's Falk's character, Irv, who shows up for two minutes at the beginning of the picture and then disappears forever. "Look," you'll say, "there's Peter Falk." Who's Irv? We never find out. He's either an old friend of Johnson's or an old relative. But it doesn't matter. It's a cameo role, and like the rest of the film, it's meaningless.
Basically, then, we get Johnson seeing the future and running from it. Sometimes, the movie shows us this future and then doubles back and tells us it's not really happening--it's only in Johnson's mind. The device is good for maybe one or two run-throughs, and then it wears thin. By the time the movie ended, I felt as though I had been cheated.
And that's it. We can't sympathize with Johnson because he's more interested in thinking about himself than in the lives of everyone in L.A. We can only sit back and watch the car chases, the gunfire, and the explosions. Oh, and not once in the film do we ever find out what the baddies want or what they plan to do with their bomb.
In its favor, "Next" is mercifully brief at ninety-six minutes, which is understandable considering that it doesn't have to do any of those tedious things like produce a coherent plot or develop a well-rounded main character or create any meaningful dialogue. The film just has to keep moving from scene to scene, chase to chase, blowing things up, which it does with commendable efficiency.
Personal trivia notes: As I was watching the movie for the second time, a few issues continued to nag me. (1) Cage needs a haircut. (2) Biel still looks like a teenager. (3) How does a two-bit stage magician suddenly develop the martial-arts skills to beat up a half a dozen military guards? Even if he could see their punches coming ahead of time, it takes talent and training to fight the way he does.
Why am I questioning anything in a Dumb Action Movie?
Video:
Paramount shot the film with a Panavision Genesis HD camera, so if you're a fan of digital photography, you'll like what you see. I thought the results were OK but not in the highest echelon of high-definition quality. As they did with their HD DVD edition, Paramount transferred the movie to Blu-ray in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio using an MPEG4/AVC codec. The results are fine, although not quite in the high-def demonstration class. Colors are bright and vivid, and the screen is exceptionally clean. However, I did not find the hues entirely natural, sometimes being a tad too gaudy and saturated (although probably appropriate to the film's opening setting in Las Vegas). Object delineation is often on the soft side, as is inner detailing; the overall picture is a bit dark; and depth perception is a trifle flat. Still, the transfer undoubtedly conveys everything that was in the digital master, and that's the aim of any video reproduction.
Audio:
The disc offers the choice in English of uncompressed PCM 5.1 or Dolby Digital 5.1. Obviously, I urge you to listen in the lossless PCM format. In either audio format, however, you'll find a strong impact, plenty of taut bass, and the sort of effective use of the surrounds that we have come to expect from modern action films, with lots of screeching tires, helicopters, rain, and thunder in the rear channels. The climactic shoot-out has bullets flying from all five main speakers. Still, I found the uncompressed PCM 5.1 track slightly more dynamic and a touch smoother than the DD 5.1 track, with a wider and more open stereo spread.
Extras:
The bonuses on this Blu-ray disc are the same as on Paramount's HD DVD: four short featurettes. The first item is "Making the Next Best Thing," about eighteen minutes of typical behind-the-scenes, making-of material with the filmmakers. The second is "Visualizing the Next Move," a little over seven minutes dealing with the kind of visual-effects elaboration we've seen a hundred times before. The third item is "The Next Grand Idea," some six minutes about the Grand Canyon sequences in the film. And the fourth item is "Two Minutes in the Future With Jessica Biel," which ought to be self-explanatory. They are all in HD (MPEG2).
Things wind down with eighteen scene selections; a widescreen theatrical trailer (HD); English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles, with English captions for the hearing impaired. Since this is a Paramount Blu-ray disc, you also get pop-up menus.
Parting Shots:
Without a doubt, "Next" is one of the most nonsensical action stories in history. It's almost not even a story but merely a series of chases and explosions punctuated by the contrivance of the main character seeing the future. Everything that happens is preposterous, and the filmmakers make no attempt to let us forget it. They are content to give us characters who are one-dimensional and plot events that are without rhyme or reason. Cage explains on one the featurettes that he wanted to shoot a part of the movie in the Grand Canyon simply because he had once visited the place and thought it would be nice to go back and film there. The whole movie has that kind of random, haphazard feeling to it, and not even high-definition picture and sound can save it from itself.
Basically, then, we get Johnson seeing the future and running from it. Sometimes, the movie shows us this future and then doubles back and tells us it's not really happening--it's only in Johnson's mind. The device is good for maybe one or two run-throughs, and then it wears thin. By the time the movie ended, I felt as though I had been cheated.
And that's it. We can't sympathize with Johnson because he's more interested in thinking about himself than in the lives of everyone in L.A. We can only sit back and watch the car chases, the gunfire, and the explosions. Oh, and not once in the film do we ever find out what the baddies want or what they plan to do with their bomb.
In its favor, "Next" is mercifully brief at ninety-six minutes, which is understandable considering that it doesn't have to do any of those tedious things like produce a coherent plot or develop a well-rounded main character or create any meaningful dialogue. The film just has to keep moving from scene to scene, chase to chase, blowing things up, which it does with commendable efficiency.
Personal trivia notes: As I was watching the movie for the second time, a few issues continued to nag me. (1) Cage needs a haircut. (2) Biel still looks like a teenager. (3) How does a two-bit stage magician suddenly develop the martial-arts skills to beat up a half a dozen military guards? Even if he could see their punches coming ahead of time, it takes talent and training to fight the way he does.
Why am I questioning anything in a Dumb Action Movie?
Video:
Paramount shot the film with a Panavision Genesis HD camera, so if you're a fan of digital photography, you'll like what you see. I thought the results were OK but not in the highest echelon of high-definition quality. As they did with their HD DVD edition, Paramount transferred the movie to Blu-ray in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio using an MPEG4/AVC codec. The results are fine, although not quite in the high-def demonstration class. Colors are bright and vivid, and the screen is exceptionally clean. However, I did not find the hues entirely natural, sometimes being a tad too gaudy and saturated (although probably appropriate to the film's opening setting in Las Vegas). Object delineation is often on the soft side, as is inner detailing; the overall picture is a bit dark; and depth perception is a trifle flat. Still, the transfer undoubtedly conveys everything that was in the digital master, and that's the aim of any video reproduction.
Audio:
The disc offers the choice in English of uncompressed PCM 5.1 or Dolby Digital 5.1. Obviously, I urge you to listen in the lossless PCM format. In either audio format, however, you'll find a strong impact, plenty of taut bass, and the sort of effective use of the surrounds that we have come to expect from modern action films, with lots of screeching tires, helicopters, rain, and thunder in the rear channels. The climactic shoot-out has bullets flying from all five main speakers. Still, I found the uncompressed PCM 5.1 track slightly more dynamic and a touch smoother than the DD 5.1 track, with a wider and more open stereo spread.
Extras:
The bonuses on this Blu-ray disc are the same as on Paramount's HD DVD: four short featurettes. The first item is "Making the Next Best Thing," about eighteen minutes of typical behind-the-scenes, making-of material with the filmmakers. The second is "Visualizing the Next Move," a little over seven minutes dealing with the kind of visual-effects elaboration we've seen a hundred times before. The third item is "The Next Grand Idea," some six minutes about the Grand Canyon sequences in the film. And the fourth item is "Two Minutes in the Future With Jessica Biel," which ought to be self-explanatory. They are all in HD (MPEG2).
Things wind down with eighteen scene selections; a widescreen theatrical trailer (HD); English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles, with English captions for the hearing impaired. Since this is a Paramount Blu-ray disc, you also get pop-up menus.
Parting Shots:
Without a doubt, "Next" is one of the most nonsensical action stories in history. It's almost not even a story but merely a series of chases and explosions punctuated by the contrivance of the main character seeing the future. Everything that happens is preposterous, and the filmmakers make no attempt to let us forget it. They are content to give us characters who are one-dimensional and plot events that are without rhyme or reason. Cage explains on one the featurettes that he wanted to shoot a part of the movie in the Grand Canyon simply because he had once visited the place and thought it would be nice to go back and film there. The whole movie has that kind of random, haphazard feeling to it, and not even high-definition picture and sound can save it from itself.
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[release]21735[/release]