RSS
Home
DVD review- Knowing (2009)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Nicolas Cage can't remember where he parked his car in Knowing.
Nicolas Cage is one of the more perplexing blockbuster movie stars. In the last ten years he's appeared in some really horrible movies, movies that would normally destroy careers. Some of the worst include Gone In 60 Seconds, Snake Eyes, Ghost Rider, and Bangkok Dangerous. And yet he's still a major star, perhaps because there have been some good ones (Bringing Out the Dead, Adaptation, The Weather Man), but those bad ones are awfully overwhelming. Knowing seems to have the potential to rank among the good ones, especially since it was written and directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City), who has a much better track record than Cage.
Knowing opens in 1959 with a class of grade schoolers contributing drawings of their ideas of the future for a time capsule. One little girl, the quiet and spooky Lucinda, scribbles a series of seemingly nonsensical numbers and is later found in a closet clawing more numbers on the inside of the door with her bloodied fingers. Fifty years later the time capsule is opened. Cage, playing professor of astrophysics and widower John Koestler, is there with his son, Caleb, who ends up getting the paper with the numbers. Koestler ends up studying the numbers later and finds what he believes to be a pattern. The numbers seem to predict the time and location of all of the major disasters of the last fifty years. Seeing that there are not many digits left on the paper, Koestler sets off on the time-honored tradition of the race against time to possibly save the world.
Sadly, Knowing turns out to be one of the worst movies Cage has ever made. This is the kind of film where the revelation of any small character detail, such as Koestler's alcoholism or the hearing aid that is worn by his son, later becomes a device of the plot (this echoes the theory of determinism that is discussed in Koestler's class early in the movie). Knowing is also cheap and tasteless enough to use 9/11 as a plot device (the first set of numbers that Koestler identifies predicts the September 11th attacks), which is really just unnecessary. Cage overacts horrifically throughout the film, oftentimes coming off like a petulant child. Even the talented Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later, Sunshine) is wasted here in a supporting role where her character is virtually useless and whose hysteria serves to only pad the plot.
But the worst offense that Knowing commits is the plot twist. Once it is finally revealed, the twist is so bad and hokey that M. Night Shyamalan would slap his brow in disgust. It serves only to render Knowing as a silly movie, which is not the right vibe for this kind of film. Not recommended for anybody, even Nicolas Cage fans. Knowing that this movie is a waste of time is not only half the battle...it could save two hours of your life.
DVD features include a commentary with the director, a Making Of featurette, and another featurette entitled "Visions of the Apocalypse." Also available on Blu-Ray.
For more information: Knowing
Rent it from Netflix: Knowing
Related Articles:
Comments
