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Starring: Nicholas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel, Thomas Kretschmann, Peter Falk, Jim Beaver, Tory Kittles

Written by: Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh and Paul Bernbaum (Sort of Vaguely Inspired By A Short Story By Phillip K. Dick)

Directed by: Lee Tamahori

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Rated: PG-13

In early 1953, a brilliant young author wrote a story that responded to what he saw as a disconcerting preoccupation with power fantasies in mainstream sci-fi. Over 50 years later, a big-budget movie based on a central premise of this story immortalizes it as a pop action film that taps into the same power fantasies from which the original author was trying to get away. Philip K. Dick’s Golden Man, was a clever, little unpretentious story about the tenuous divisions between divinity, humanity and animalism in the modern world as contemporary society becomes obsolete. Here it’s been turned into a respectable action film that serves as a lead in to the summer movie season. It’s just too bad the producers didn’t make a film about the story for which they had the film rights.

Nicolas Cage stars as Vegas stage magician Chris Johnson. Johnson is capable of seeing everything that happens in the next few minutes, which allows him to change his immediate future however he wants. Johnson’s ability to shape destiny is the only thing actually taken from Dick’s story. Everything else is an invention of three credited (and probably quite a few un-credited) screenwriters. Some of it works. Some of it doesn’t.

Johnson hates his life in Vegas, but plans on maintaining it until he can run into a beautiful woman (Jessica Biel) of which he keeps having visions. When he finally does run into her, his dreams of running away with her are complicated by FBI agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore), who hopes to use Johnson’s unique ability to avert the next major terrorist attack on the United States. This is everything one might expect from the director of action franchise films like XXX: State of the Union and Die Another Day. Tamahori competently guides the action along in a fast-paced package that also manages a few brief twinges of almost believable romance.

Cage holds the center of the film together as a likeable guy who just happens to know everything that’s going to happen next. The physical choreography of this in action sequences is a lot more interesting than anything that the screenwriters managed with any of the drama. Illustrations of Johnson’s view of time meet with mixed result throughout the film. Biel seems a bit out of place here as she takes a break from being the heroine to play the hero’s love interest.

Julianne Moore is stunning as an FBI agent trying to wrangle a man who cannot be captured so that she can force him to help save thousands and thousands of lives. So often, Moore has played the character with which Hollywood producers have wanted audiences to empathize. Here she’s not the protagonist, so she can play the role with a hard edge. And she does. It’s fun to see her let loose and play a central role in a film in her own way and, here, her charm trumps Cage’s. There’s really only one other performance worth mentioning here: in a brief scene, Peter Falk puts in an exceptionally charismatic performance as a friend of Johnson’s. Other than that, it’s all action, effects and editing.

The only real spark of originality in storytelling here is the ending, which may not come as that much of a surprise to the audience, but it takes quite a risk for a film that is, in spite of its pedigree, a highly formulaic action film. It’s a fun hour and a half at the multiplex, but it’s hardly satisfying. VS