Category Archives: mystery

Nicholas Cage has starred in many big action movies over the years but given his physical and emotional natures has been a poor choice for the roles (e.g., Gone in 60 Seconds, Face/Off, Con Air). Characters that are a bit on the quirky, self-conscious side are better fits (Matchstick Men, City of Angels, The Rock). This film, which does not require him to be strong or fast or even all that smart, turns out to be a good choice.

In Next Cage plays Chris Johnson, a man made nearly miserable by having been born with the strange talent to see about two minutes into his own future. He uses this skill to be a modestly successful Las Vegas magician and win just enough money to stay under the radar of the various casino bosses.

One night, though, he catches the eye of a security manager and needs his ability to barely escape (the unstated) unpleasantness that would surely follow being caught. On his way out, however, he bumps into a man who plans to rob the casino’s cash cage and shoot two people dead; his nature won’t allow him to skate by without stopping it from happening.

Somehow–the movie never explains this important fact–Johnson has also already come to the attention of FBI counterterrorist agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) and a polyglot terrorist band who’ve smuggled a nuclear device into Los Angeles. Both are tracking him, though the baddies just want him out of the way and Ferris wants his help stopping them.

The last complication is Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel). For the first time in his life Johnson has seen one thing more than two minutes in the future: he sees Liz walking into a Vegas diner. And he sees it over an over again, to the point where he goes to said diner every morning at the time of his vision, since he doesn’t know the day. Finally she shows up and he uses his ability to ensure the perfect approach. They leave together.

Just ahead of the Feds and bad guys, as it happens. He’s already fallen for her and sure enough she falls for him (he cheats, of course). Then the downside of his emotional attachment becomes clear as the bad guys take Cooper hostage to get to Johnson.

This movie doesn’t require Cage to be a fighter or a genius, just to be overly aware and able to portray a man weary beyond his years, something he can do quite well. Think about how ‘old’ Chris Johnson’s brain must be, reliving so many moments in time until they come out just as he desires; two minutes over and over again.

Lee Tamahori, a Bond veteran (Die Another Day), has a good touch with the mix of special effects and action, not always showing all his down cards. The script, by Gary Goldman (Total Recall) and Jonathon Hensleigh (Die Hard With a Vengeance, Armageddon, The Punisher), muddles a bit more than one would like but decent overall. Honestly I’m a bit surprised that Next wasn’t a bigger hit since I think it’s a better movie than a number of Cage’s which were.

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Star Viggo Mortensen and director David Cronenberg reteam for this alternative musing on the same thoughts behind their 2005 film A History of Violence (which I saw but apparently forget to write up here). Maybe it’s the improvement from having done this before, changing the setting from rural America to London’s urban core, that the sympathetic innocent is Naomi Watts rather than Mortensen, or that the capacity for violence of Mortensen’s character is not ever concealed, but I prefer Eastern Promises to the first movie. Maybe Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) is just a better writer than Josh Olson.

A teenage girl, who speaks no English, dies giving birth to a daughter and a hospital midwife called Anna Khitrova (Watts) takes home the girl’s diary looking for clues to her identity. The writing seems to be Russian and Anna’s uncle Stepan is a Russian emigre, but he and her mother give her grief about it so she goes to the restaurant whose card was inside the diary.

There Anna meets Semyon (Armin Muller-Stahl), the owner, who agrees to take a look at the photocopy of the diary. He’s also, it turns out, patriarch of a family which belongs to the Vory V Zakone, a Russian mafia variant, and the girl was a prostitute who belonged to him. Nikolai Luhzin (Mortensen) is one of his soldiers, working for Semyon’s son Kirill (Vincent Cassell, familiar to US audiences as Clooney’s rival thief The Fox in the Ocean’s 11 movies), though he introuces himself to the pretty Anna as “just a driver.”

Just as in History of Violence, family is the fulcrum on which all else balances. Semyon and Kirill bring Nikolai into theirs–during the scene where he becomes a ‘made’ man the Vory V Zakon leaders insult Nikolai’s real parents and require that he renounce them–and Anna risks not only her own safety but her family’s as well.

The plot is dense, much of it delivered through the emotional tones of the actors’ performances and Knight supplies a number of twists that elevate Promises above the philosophical trap into which Cronenberg might have easily been snared. Plus, you need to remember this is a David Cronenberg movie and that means you won’t walk out without a shuddering over a few gruesome scenes; here he uses throat cuttings, perhaps attempting through repetition to push through the instinctive disgust to find a deeper meaning.

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