6.9? Yeah, right.

Rating: 3/10 (8 April 2009)

I'm not sure that Alex Proyas had directed something else besides Dark City and the underrated I, Robot, but I was quite fond of his style of film-making. I had some high hopes on the concept of this film.
Unfortunately, what could have been an interesting premise with open jaw CGI sequences, was turned into yet another unoriginal sci fi flick.
The idea of having a set of numbers that predict catastrophes was far fetched (considering the 9/11 reference) but had potential. It would have been a lot more interesting had the writers and producers opted away from formulaic plot twists.
Let me state the following to all writers and studio execs that have a chance to read this comment: ALIENS ARE UNCREATIVE, UNORIGINAL AND COMPLETELY TASTELESS. Why? It's a safe way out of a supernatural mystery not even the writer his or herself can solve. "Ah, hell, let's just say it was aliens". There were so many superior existentialist theories about aliens in past science fiction masterpieces. But not today. It's not original. I would have preferred ghosts or spirits as the perpetrators of the numbers. Even angels or demons. But aliens? Again? We already saw it on The Forgotten and Indiana Jones, two movies that also lost their appeal after introducing aliens in the story.
Looking away from this intolerable aspect of the film (which is difficult) the story isn't consistent. On one end, you have a clichéd father-son relation subplot that doesn't have too much development, then you have some gritty yet spectacular catastrophe sequences and also, on the other end, you have an end of the world premise, with government announcements and frantic crowd scenes that don't hold much relation with each other.
The character scenes were rushed. Apparently, everybody believes blindly that a doomsday number list is accurate simply because someone says so and nobody asks questions.
The situation with the numbers isn't properly explained, by the way. If this elusive list was destined to be in the hands of the kid, why didn't the other girl have it as well? Why would the kid be possessed again to write more numbers if the world was going to end already? All of this makes the already exasperated viewer even more frustrated.
This movie is full with half baked ideas, that neither Nicolas Cage's nor the other actress' (that girl from Damages) average performances can salvage. It's not that Cage acts badly, but you can see he wasn't thrilled to do this.
Worth mentioning are Marco Beltrami's sometimes good musical score and the spectacular plane crash scene. Those may be the only positive aspects of this disgustingly unoriginal piece of work.
Mr. Proyas, please, don't insult your fans with this lazy directing again. And Mr. Cage, try reading the script before signing up, even if the paycheck is tempting. And to all execs and writers, I say again: DON'T USE ALIENS. THEY'RE UNORIGINAL, UNCREATIVE AND TASTELESS FOR TODAY'S SCI FI.