Movie Review: Next

The trouble with alternate-reality scenarios in general - and Next in particular - is you can't believe your own eyes.

When any given moment ripples with endless meanings and outcomes,what you actually do see can mean nothing. And why play if the game is rigged, or if someone is making up the rules as they go along?

Next proposes this as its operating theory from the first, revealing scenes of calamity - like car crashes and shootings - as things that could have happened if the character played by Nicolas Cage did not avoid them.

Cage can see two minutes into the future (or more, when it suits the narrative) and is hiding in plain sight, from government types who want to use him as a guinea pig, by working as a magician at a cut-rate Las Vegas casino.

But when - shades of "24" - Russian terrorists plant a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, a no-nonsense FBI agent played by Julianne Moore sets out to hunt down Cage and use his skills to predict the bomb's location.

Since he can see every move she makes before she makes it, he eludes capture. But he also has been having a recurring vision of a beautiful woman played by Jessica Biel, and when he meets her, she gets swept up in all this. Oh, and the terrorists are trying to kill him, too.

The torpid Next may actually trump Paycheck as the worst film based on a story by the late, highly regarded, science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick - whose works have been turned into Total Recall, Minority Report and Blade Runner. (Next was co-written by Gary Goldman, who co-wrote Total Recall and produced Minority Report.)

Director Lee Tamahori long ago forsook the humanity of his breakthrough film Once Were Warriors for the assembly-line action- film antics of XXX: State of the Union and Die Another Day, but Next is his nadir.

His occasional car chases and train wrecks are lifelessly executed, and an avalanche centerpiece is digitally sloppy.

Cage wears a shellshocked look that is only slightly more expressive than Keanu Reeves'; Moore's tough cop borders on Reno 911 camp; and Peter Falk's cameo is literally inexplicable.

There is potential in the film's sleight of hand, but no one involved is deft enough to exploit it. In fact, Next has a twist that actually made the audience groan .

I've heard noises like that before, but only at sporting events when the opposing team scores.

Because of the film's time-shifting gimmick, the characters are always checking their watches.

Even though the running time of Next is mercifully brief, the audience will be checking theirs, too.

***