Really, seriously terrible.

Rating: 3/10 (6 April 2009)

The same thing happened with Watchmen - I read a few crits here and thought 'Sounds good...' Yecch.
Another reviewer called it - starts well, sort of - at least the plot hook starts well - Time Capusule, code, something a little spooky about predicting the future. Unfortunately Nick Cage's first scene with his son was just awful and it made me sit up. I though, 'Hmm, this script really sucks. I thought Nick Cage was supposed to be good in this. Well, let's see what happens, maybe that was just a bad scene.'
Unfortunately all the scenes were like that. Wow, the acting was just terrible but the script was seriously terrible. So lame overall that I just groaned and writhed in my seat. So many predictable, hackneyed and stupid plot shifts and scenes that you just knew had been put in there because the director simply couldn't come up with anything original. I mean really really awful. You know the kind of thing where the hero says 'Wait here. Just wait here' and you just know the hysterical female lead is going to get out of the car and run into the dark, misty woods. Right? There were about 7 of these clichés back to back, separated by the lamest dialogue you can imagine. 'The world is going to end and I can't do anything about it.' At that stage I wondered 'How is the writer going to get him out of this total plot dead end? I hope at least that's going to be worth sitting here. Nope, the final scenes are just awful; pathetic, insulting to anyone's imagination and intelligence and such a cop out that I left the cinema disgusted.
So, my rating: Plot 3 - just because it started with a hint of promise; Script Minus 5 - deplorable, really terrible; Acting Minus 2 - Uniformly bad, embarrassingly so. When you're hoping the female lead will get killed soon so you can be spared her presence on the screen, things have gotten pretty low in the performance department; Direction Minus 2 - what else is there left for the director after scripts, and performances? The camera-work was fine. The Special effects were so much better than the rest of the movie that whenever they came on it felt like we'd changed channels.
It was a depressing experience, but if you don't care what you watch and are willing to have your intelligence insulted, go see it.