'Knowing' keeps audience in the dark

July 28, 11:40 AMCharlotte DVD ExaminerCorey Schwab

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Rose Byrne, the female lead Ap photo/ Peter kramer

     Sometimes a director gets the urge to channel one of his colleagues. Sometimes it works well, like when Steven Spielberg put on his thinking cap and set it to ‘Stanley Kubrick’ for ‘A.I.: Artificial Intelligence’. This time we’ve got a horrid combination, like fruit juice and seawater, that’s disappointing enough to prevent the cast and crew from mentioning it on their resumes.
     Director Alex Proyas has given us the creepy ‘Dark City’ and the blood-rushing ‘I, robot’, but this time he has created a sci-fi narrative that paints itself into a corner faster than Bob Ross trying to recreate the Himalayas on a napkin. 
     The film ‘Knowing’ stars Nicholas Cage, the go-to guy for mildly intellectual roles, as Professor John Koestler. When his son receives a piece of paper covered in numbers from a time capsule that was supposed to be filled with children’s drawings, our monotone professor gives the page a second look. He quickly discovers that the numbers all correspond to every major disaster since the time capsule was buried, including location, day, and the number of fatalities. These dates also extend further into the future, predicting three disasters that haven’t happened yet. The film’s dedication to explaining the numbers gets more slacked with every passing minute, until a giant deus ex machina literally descends from the sky in a heavenly light to save the plot. The storyline may still be alive at that point, but it’s mutilated beyond recognition by a lack of explanations.Proyas seems to be channeling the master of disaster, Roland Emmerich, as he fills the screen with explosions, firestorms, and vehicles sliding across the ground while flinging sparks into the eyes of tiny, horrified, CGI people.
     Although the disaster scenes are mildly entertaining, especially the initial one where Koestler wanders dumbfounded through a plane crash and gawks at survivors as they immolate their way into the death toll, Proyas’ heavy-handed direction makes the rest of the film an annoying lull. Switching from large scale disasters to the creepy investigation of the little girl who recorded all the numbers is schizophrenic at best. Too many loose threads are left to burn up in the film’s final moments, leaving you confused, unsatisfied, or asleep.
     ‘Knowing’ gets a rating of 4/10.