Next - HD DVD REVIEW By John J. Puccio - Part 2

Basically, then, we get Johnson seeing the future and running from it. Sometimes, the movie shows us this future and then doubles back and tells us it's not really happening, it's only in Johnson's mind. The device is good for maybe one or two run-throughs, and then it wears thin. By the time the movie ended, I felt as though I had been cheated.

And that's it. We can't sympathize with Johnson because he's more interested in thinking about himself than in the lives of everyone in L.A. We can only sit back and watch the car chases, the gunfire, and the explosions. Oh, and not once in the film do we ever find out what the baddies want or what they plan to do with their bomb.

In its favor, "Next" is mercifully brief at ninety-six minutes, which is understandable considering that it doesn't have to do any of those tedious things like produce a coherent plot or develop a well-rounded main character or create any meaningful dialogue. The film just has to keep moving from scene to scene, chase to chase, blowing things up, which it does with commendable efficiency.

Video:
Paramount shot the movie using a Panavision Genesis HD camera, so if you're a fan of digital photography, you'll like what you see. I thought the results were OK but not in the topmost echelon of high-definition quality. Paramount then transferred the movie to disc at its 2.40:1 theatrical aspect ratio (measuring about 2.27:1 across my television, given a small degree of overscan), using an MPEG4/AVC codec. The results are fine, although not quite in the HD demonstration class. Colors are bright and vivid, and the screen is exceptionally clean. However, I did not find the hues entirely natural, being a tad too gaudy and saturated (although probably appropriate to the film's opening setting in Las Vegas). Object delineation is sometimes a tad on the soft side, as is inner detailing; the overall picture is a bit dark; and depth perception seems a trifle flat. Still, the transfer undoubtedly conveys everything that was in the digital master, and that's the aim of any video reproduction.

Audio:
The disc offers the choice of Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 or Dolby TrueHD 5.1. If you have the capability to play the sound in TrueHD--and I imagine by now that would be practically every HD DVD owner, since most such people have undoubtedly updated their players to do so--I would urge you to select it at start-up. (DD+ is the default.) In either audio format you'll find good impact, plenty of taut bass, and the sort of effective use of the surrounds that we have come to expect from modern action films, with lots of screeching tires, helicopters, rain, and thunder in the rear channels. I found the TrueHD track somewhat smoother and a touch less bright than the DD+ track, also leaving me with the impression of its being more open and wider spread out. But the differences are small in any case.

Extras:
You can't say Paramount shortchanged anybody with the technical quality of this HD DVD. Not only did they provide a TrueHD soundtrack, but they gave us all of the extras in high definition. Not that I liked the extras any better than I liked the movie, but, well, you get the idea. The main bonuses are four short featurettes. The first item is "Making the Next Best Thing," about eighteen minutes of typical behind-the-scenes, making-of material with the filmmakers. The second item is "Visualizing the Next Move," a little over seven minutes dealing with the kind of visual-effects elaboration we've seen a hundred times before. The third item is "The Next 'Grand Idea,'" some six minutes about the Grand Canyon sequences in the film. And the fourth item is "Two Minutes in the Future With Jessica Biel," which ought to be self-explanatory.

Things wind down with eighteen scene selections; a widescreen theatrical trailer (HD); English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles, with English captions for the hearing impaired. Since this is a Paramount HD DVD, you also get the usual HD features, like pop-up menus, a guide to elapsed time, and so on.

Parting Shots:
I have to say that "Next" is about the most nonsensical action movie I've seen in a long while. Maybe the most nonsensical action movie I've ever seen. It's almost a non-movie, in fact, a series of chases and explosions punctuated by the gimmick of the main character seeing the future. Everything that happens is preposterous, and the filmmakers make no attempt to help us forget it. They are content to give us characters who are one-dimensional and plot events that happen with little rhyme or reason. Cage explains on one the featurettes that he wanted to shoot a part of the movie in the Grand Canyon simply because he had once visited the place and thought it would be nice to go back and film there. The whole movie has that kind of random, haphazard feeling to it.
HD DVD REVIEW
By John J. Puccio (www.dvdtown.com)
FIRST PUBLISHED Sep 14, 2007