Rating: 3.5 Pulses
Starring Nicholas Cage, Rose Byrne
Directed by Alex Proyas
Rated PG-13
Going into the theater, there were a few things I already knew about Knowing: 1. It’s half the battle. 2. The plot centers on a numerical sequence that supposedly predicts every major disaster on earth, and 3. Nicolas Cage’s hair is the unholy offspring of Doc Brown, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Just For Men.
What I didn’t know about Knowing, however, proved far more palatable. The title is somewhat misleading. Knowing is more about ignorance than intelligence. It’s about what we can’t know. ##M:{read more]##
For instance, we’ll never know whether five years of crap films have somehow caused Nick Cage’s follicle follies or vice-versa. The stilted stammerer returns to the screen as John, an alcoholic widower and MIT professor whose hearing-impaired son stumbles upon a prophetic parchment. Following a by-the-books research montage revealing nothing we don’t already know going into the film, Cage decodes the time/date/place of what he thinks are three remaining disasters, the last of which spells out the end of mankind.
The exposition and character development of these first few reels are as bland as dry Cheerios (plain, not Honey Nut), and then, just as the faithless professor predicts, disaster strikes! Proyas’ chilling hand-held camera follows John through flaming wreckage as burning bodies flail through one long shot. At times, the action sequences, though mostly bloodless, feel like disaster fetishism. We know people are going to die because the numbers say so, but just in case you forgot, here are some folks getting smashed by a runaway subway train. To the film’s credit, I’m sure certain scenes of Knowing will be very difficult to sit through for disaster survivors.
The brutal realism of the catastrophes works in cohesive contrast to the paranormal elements of the story. John has figured out what will happen and when, but he has no idea where the numbers came from, how to stop the disasters from happening, or what it has to do with his son and those creepy blonde-guys-in-black-suits stalking them. But, once these questions are answered, this often poorly acted, predictable film becomes something wholly other. Conversely bleak and optimistic, Knowing ultimately defies its traditional trajectory, and is all the better for it.
