Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of

Rating: 3/10 (8 December 2009)

Watched this the other night, and after reading the other reviews on here I was surprised at how much of a slating this movie gets. OK, so many of the reviews seem to match a general theme - i.e. - great movie but very poor ending, and that's probably about right, but I do feel this movie is a lot better than it appears. The premise of a girl predicting events 50 years into the future by using a sequence of numbers is very well done, and the obvious predictability here is that Nicholas Cage will inevitably come across some predictions that haven't yet happened. But the suspense is well balanced, and the real problem this movie has is that the build up to the finale is so well organised, that there is no way they can end the film adequately. In the end, we are almost forced to accept an ending not so much cheesy as positively laden down with cheddar. But thankfully the producers steered away from the cliché ridden 'America saves the world' type of curtain faller - goodness knows how much messier it could have been had Bruce Willis and not Cage been the star name. And that then got me thinking about endings and movies in general. It never ceases to amaze me just how much some movies divide audiences, and in some cases are we expecting too much? Shouldn't the function of movies ultimately be to set out to entertain and do we get too self centred and precocious about some titles? Frankly, there is enough pacy tension and entertainment in the opening hour of this film to more than paper over the cracks, and if Spielberg had been at the helm, we would have all been heralding it as a work of genius.