I wish I could review the first two-thirds of a movie and advise you, gentle reader, to simply turn it off at a certain point and walk away. It’s easier when a film has a flawed beginning– you can just stick it out and the final experience can nevertheless be satisfying, but a flawed final act will more likely spoil the entire picture. Such is the case, regrettably, with Knowing, an otherwise intriguing science fiction fable from director Alex Proyas and starring Nicolas Cage. Cage plays John Koestler, an MIT professor whose son has been given a sheet full of numbers from a time capsule buried by the students of his school in 1959. Those students were asked to draw what the future will look like–lots of crayon robots and flying cars. But the young girl who suggested the time capsule in the first place frantically scrawls rows and rows of seemingly random numbers, and 50 years later her handiwork captivates Koestler, who finds a pattern in the numbers–they are in fact the dates, geographic coordinates and death tolls from every major disaster since 1959. I guess it’s a good thing September 11 never got a name apart from its date, or he probably wouldn’t have seen anything. The sheet lists three dates in the near future–can Koestler stop the disasters and save lives? All of this suggests the film’s conflict will be between the ideas of determinism versus randomness in the universe, an intriguing idea indeed, and one that’s conveniently spelled out by Koestler in his class early in the film.

Proyas has proven himself a very capable science fiction director, particularly a decade ago with his great sci-fi noir Dark City. In Knowing he establishes a compelling tension, mostly from the simple question of whether Koestler can prevent tragedy if he sees it coming, or if fate has the deck stacked against him. The action is well-paced throughout the film, and it’s really only a few small details that threaten to derail the whole enterprise. This is already the kind of story that can be nit-picked to death, but one particular (and unnecessary) event late in the game made the entire premise of the story appear irrelevant to me. I imagine this relatively simple occurrence was intended to add even more conflict and set up a big car chase, maybe just to get the principal characters (who at this point have become morons who can do little else but hysterically scream “We must save the CHILDREN!”) moving in the right direction again. But I guess I shouldn’t give away the story, so you’ll have to see for yourself.

This film, like the recent remake of Day the Earth Stood Still, promises to be a refreshingly classic, philosophical sci-fi flick but ultimately fails to deliver on its message. The final minutes of the Keanu Reeves Day managed to prove the aliens to be wishy-washy idiots. Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, while I maintain that it is an underrated masterpiece, isn’t very strong in its conclusion either. It’s hard to know who’s to blame for this–is it the dumb Hollywood producers who want a certain type of ending? I doubt it, actually. In fact, I wonder if Nicolas Cage himself might have influenced the direction Knowing takes. Late in the story, certain situations started to feel familiar to me, and after you watch the movie (if you do) I suggest you Google Cage and find out what he named his real-life son. Should be good for a laugh. – [DVD]

Action/Drama/Mystery/Sci-Fi

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 7/7/09

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