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Seriously, no other reviews of this?

As far back as I can remember, Hollywood has long shunned the traditional Gregorian calendar, and used their own way of recording time based on the type of films they make. They seem to have based it on the Chinese calendar. We've had the year of the alien invasion, the year of the asteroid/comet, the year of Mars, the year of the magician and the year of CGI animation. We even had (a long time ago), the year of Robin Hood, if you recall. And now we have 2006/2007: otherwise known as the year of the mullet.

For yet again in an action film, the lead, in this case Nicholas Cage, joins a band of other well known actors including Colin Farrell and Tom Hanks to sport what must be the worst haircut since Og the caveman decided to rub his hair in some dinosaur dung because he'd decided that flies were cool. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you; the mullet. The one thing from the eighties that should have stayed there.

Basic plot (trailer): Nic Cage plays a man who can see two minutes into his own future. But observing the future changes it, because you know what's going to happen and can avoid it. So basically, he can see ALL his possible futures, and make the right choices to get to the desired outcome.

As a plot device, it works remarkably well. It shouldn't work, but it does. The film uses this to create some genius heist components, some brilliant future-foo fighting and a really impressive way to search a large area in a short time. All using the same plot device, and without it becoming samey.

Special effects are very impressive, ranging from very subtle to fairly obvious. A couple of scenes that are clearly CGI, such as the steam locomotive (not least because you can't help thinking out loud that there's no way in hell that the stunt director would let anyone do that stunt for real). But all in all, very well done.

The bad guys are rather poorly scripted, no explanation for motivation, and they seem to be French just to be different. However, this is more than made up by the final showdown sequence, which is spectacular. It's basically an evil overlord's worst nightmare.

It's out on DVD now, and its well worth a look.

Score: I'm giving this a B+ because I really enjoyed it. Inspite of the mullet.

OQ: That wasn't it.