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Knowing Review
A cut above the crud that Nic Cage has been perpetrating on a regular basis lately.
Knowing is a strenuously doomy sci-fi thriller that takes itself more seriously than something like Next, despite certain similarities in the story department.
Cage’s MIT professor John Koestler is intrigued, at first, then dismayed, when he examines the missive his son has brought home from school. It is a letter from half a century ago, when the pupils of a local school left their predictions about the world in a time capsule that has been sealed ever since. Most of the kids drew robots or spaceships, but not Lucinda – her envelope contains a series of numbers, enough to fill an entire page. The sequence 091101 stands out, especially when John realises the numbers that follow it are the same as the tally of the dead on that fateful day. As he examines the numbers more closely, he realises each equation signifies the date and death count of a serious disaster. Worse, there are three more dates at the end, all for this very week…
Cast details
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Nicolas Cage
Born: 07 Jan 1964
Long Beach, CaliforniaTop rated films View all The Rock - Blu-ray (1996) 
Kick-Ass (2010)
Yes, it has some very big problems in the credibility department, and universally lousy acting to boot. But it also has genuinely disturbing moments. This is a dark, tense story and you couldn’t accuse the movie of pulling its punches. Sometimes you might wish that it had.
Credit director Alex Proyas, whose Dark City is a worthy cult film, but who has only made one picture since (I, Robot). Proyas has a bold visual sense and, it turns out, a taste for carnage - attributes that carry the portentous atmosphere through some clumsily written scenes. (The screenplay boasts six pairs of hands, including Proyas and Donnie Darko auteur Richard Kelly, who was once slated to direct this).
Some elements in the screenplay don’t appear to have been worked through properly or have fallen prey to budget limitations. John Koestler’s son Caleb (played by one Chandler Canterbury) has a hearing disability and picks up confusing signals from people he dubs the whisperers, but they never tell him anything useful and the kid never does anything. Come the movie’s last reel revelations you have to wonder if there wasn’t a simpler way to engineer the same outcome.
Not does it help that Proyas shoots the whisperers like an 80s New Romantic band, all long coats, severe blond haircuts and backlighting… I kept thinking of Ultravox: "Ah, Vienna!"
Knowing: Nicolas Cage
A subplot – on the backburner, as it were – about an imminent series of sun-flares which are supposedly the cause of an unseasonal heat wave would work better if Proyas gave us an indication that things are actually hotting up. He might have asked Nic Cage to unbutton his shirt or something…
But it’s easy to see where the money was spent. The movie has three big CGI sequences. Each depicts a different disaster in spectacular fashion. Spectacular, but also grisly and horrific. Remember when, after 9/11, pundits suggested the Hollywood disaster movie was over? Quite the opposite: the effect seems to have been to encourage ever more graphic and realistic scenes of devastation and despair, to the point where Knowing could be considered traumatic to watch.
But it’s easy to see where the money was spent. The movie has three big CGI sequences. Each depicts a different disaster in spectacular fashion. Spectacular, but also grisly and horrific. Remember when, after 9/11, pundits suggested the Hollywood disaster movie was over? Quite the opposite: the effect seems to have been to encourage ever more graphic and realistic scenes of devastation and despair, to the point where Knowing could be considered traumatic to watch.
The bombastic, earth-shudderingly loud score offers no relief, though the cosmic ending might invite a few chortles.
Even so, despite its many faults, Knowing is sometimes unsettlingly good. My advice: bring ear plugs and hope for the best.
Knowing Reviews
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