Nicolas Cage Sees the Future Again - 'Knowing' Review...

Posted on March 24, 2009 - 3:25am by michael Knowing has cleaved audiences in half with remarkable precision, as only the best love it or hate it movies can, and it’s not hard to see why. There are times when the movie approaches a level of excitement and brilliant special effects that only come along in truly the greatest of science fiction movies, but then there are times when it reaches levels of logical emptiness and ridiculous acting that it becomes more and more difficult not to laugh.

There is, for example, a pivotal scene in the movie where Nicolas Cage drops to his knees in pure shock and awe, and if you make it through that scene without laughing out loud, please email me and I'll send you a prize. I feel comfortable putting that in writing right here on hollywire.com, because there's no way you're going to be able to do it, especially after reading this. Be honest!

Oh, and there's also an intensely emotional scene between Cage's character and his son that, in terms of sheer emotional flatness, rivals the two similar belly-flops in  the hilariously bad Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Brendan Fraser, who is, ah, not exactly one of our most emotionally talented actors.

I will, however, defend Encino Man to the death. That movie rules and you know it.

Knowing Director Alex Proyas is responsible for some good movies in the past. He brought us Dark City, The Crow, and I, Robot, but regardless of how much you will appreciate his latest project Knowing, it’s inarguable that this is the weakest script that he has worked on in a major film so far.

The movie poses the question about whether the universe is or deterministic or random, whether everything that will ever happen is already written in fate, or if we have some power to change what happens to us and the world around us. This is an idea with endless storytelling possibilities, and the movie does explore a lot of these possibilities but it doesn’t stop very often to consider what it’s doing or why.

Nicolas Cage plays John Koestler, a professor of Astrophysics at MIT who’s son comes into possession of a mysterious sheet of seemingly random numbers when his school opens a time capsule buried in 1959 containing students’ predictions of what the world will look like in 2009. One night while staying up drinking by himself, John spills some booze on the paper and then notices the numbers 911012996 in the middle of the page. He writes the numbers out clearly on a white board for the benefit of the audience and, even through eyes clouded with alcohol, discovers within the next few minutes not only that those numbers refer to 9/11/01 and the 2,996 people who died that day, but also that the rest of the sequence refers to every major disaster in the world over the last 50 years.

Forgetting how miraculous it is that John figures this all out within a matter of a few minutes, it's definitely an interesting premise for a supernatural thriller, although it also underlines a problem that permeates the entire movie. On the surface it’s a remarkably interesting thriller, but there is no underlying force that drives the narrative, even for the smallest plot developments. Everything happens to serve the purpose of the screenplay, which leaves you with the feeling that you’re being led along by the hand by a bunch of screenwriters. We do learn how the list of numbers came to be, but when you find out that explanation, it takes surprisingly little contemplation to realize that it doesn’t make a scrap of sense.

John is an Astrophysicist who comes to believe that he has been given proof that there is some kind of higher power in the universe and that he now has the power to predict three disasters in the future, and possibly prevent them. He shows the list to his colleagues at MIT who immediately scoff, as is to be expected, although it’s a little strange that they laugh off the startling accuracy of the numbers. The list perfectly predicts the exact dates of 50 years of disasters and the exact numbers of people killed but still people ridicule him and at least one MIT colleague continues to theorize that “maybe the numbers mean nothing.”

Right.

The question by now is not whether the numbers mean anything. Definitely they do. Any relevant question at this point would be about where the numbers came from or how to deal with the information that they offer about the three events still in the future.

And while the movie’s cast of MIT professors don’t all know that these are the important questions, at least the movie does, but it spends most of the rest of the running time trying to answer both of them simultaneously. The unfortunate result is that we bounce back and forth between some unlikely but highly impressive special effects sequences and the strange appearance of what the kids in the movie call “the whisper people,” who are the film’s biggest and most crippling flaw.

[caption id="attachment_26604" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="There is one man, by the way, who runs screaming and on fire away from this commercial airliner crash site into the pouring rain. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, consider yourself very, very lucky."][/caption]

But those effects sequences are something else, man, I'm telling you. There’s a plane crash that is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a movie, and there’s a subway crash that is so good that it seems like it should officially, after all these years, render the one on the Studio Tour at Universal Studios Hollywood obsolete. It may finally be time to let that thing die, but let's just hope they don't replace it with another head-smackingly stupid mess like the Fast and Furious thing with the dancing cars. Have you seen that thing? OUCH. On the other hand, given the amount of velocity behind the subway train in this movie, and the amount of damage it causes, I would estimate that it would have to  have been traveling at somewhere around 200mph and be made of solid iron.

But let’s not sweat the details, shall we? Because such things are as unimportant as logic in a movie that shows us the end of the world. Especially in a movie that shows us the end of the world and stars Nicholas Cage. The important thing is to be entertained, and it would be a little crazy to suggest that Knowing doesn’t do that.

[caption id="attachment_26605" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Don't kneel! Don't kneel!"][/caption]

Although if I can make one complaint in that area – remember that movie Mission to Mars? I hope I can say this without ruining anything in Knowing, but just in case, be advised that there may be potential spoilers coming up. Mission to Mars had an outstanding cast and a fascinating story for the vast majority of the movie, but then do you remember what happened? We met the Martians, and the whole thing just turned into a cheesy CGI joke. Something very similar happens in Knowing. There are no Martians, we never really learn what they are or why they’re there (well, of course we know why they’re there, but we never learn the reason why they’re there – you’ll have to see it to understand what I mean), but regardless of all of that, it’s the last 20 minutes or so of the movie that will separate the lovers from the haters.

I’m willing to forgive a lot when a movie is genuinely entertaining, but even though Knowing really makes you think in a lot of ways and sparks debate (this is one of the highest functions of science fiction), it’s also asking for a lot of forgiveness. But isn't it interesting that, in a movie that deals so directly with so many questions of religious philosophy, it is your capacity for forgiveness that will ultimately determine how much you appreciate the film?

[caption id="attachment_26606" align="aligncenter" width="261" caption="3.5 Beans out of 5."][/caption]