People will malign this movie, much as they did Paycheck, much as a variety of other sci-fi oriented action movies will inevitably be maligned. Action fans think they're stupid, not that action is exactly a bright genre; average movie fans will be annoyed by the bluntness of the action and the complications of the sci-fi plot; sci-fi fans will find it all to be dim-witted and foolish.
Personally I like a mix of action and science-fiction. It tempers both with an intrigue that isn't regularly possessed by the horror movies that science-fiction turns into when you add action.
Next doesn't stray too far into the future, instead offering us a man, played by Nicholas Cage, whose mental powers allow him to see glimpses of the near-future, constantly reweighing his every action until he comes to a desired precognitive conclusion. The crux of this ability is not badly handled by the director, Lee Tamahori, best known for Once Were Warriors and Mulholland Falls, as well as the much-less stunning Die Another Day and xXx: State Of The Union, equally terrible movies. Next easily surpasses most of the films he's crafted in the past decade, most likely because of the action movie regulars who crafted the script from Philip K. Dick's short story.
Jessica Biel, an increasingly more interesting actress, and the fantastic Julianne Moore buoy the film with their abilities, making the overall production greater than the sum of its parts. Cage, for his part, actually turns in a decent and surprisingly straight performance, though the idea of a grizzled Cage getting frisky with Biel is somewhat frightening. Otherwise, the actors do a fine job of taking what could be a slight concept and imminent failure and making a best-case-scenario out of the proceedings.
The plot itself is fairly simple: Cage is a man who can see the near future, but has received visions of a meeting with a woman in the some indistinct future. After stopping a casino robbery before it begins with his foresight, he is believed to be a robber. He goes on the run before he can be cleared, meeting the woman along the way, and travelling with her. As he goes along, he is being tracked by the feds, who want his help, and a shadowy group, who want to kill him. They are planning a major terrorist attack, which the government is trying to foil. The organization wants Cage dead to prevent him from stopping them; the feds want his help to stop the terrorist attack. So, of course, by going after him, the terrorists force him to help the feds and do exactly what they were trying to prevent.
While an interesting plot, the ending feels like a slight cop-out, but it's not a bad move. It leaves the film slightly incomplete, but it allows for an open-ended finale without the closure of completing the story. It's a sort of writer's trick to give you enough story to make you happy without having to do it properly.
Next will be more satisfying to people looking for some disposable fun on DVD than it probably would be theatrically and those who aren't expecting too much should find it to be an enjoyable time and somewhat clever.
