Movie Review - "Knowing"
By Skip Tucker
http://www.skiptucker.com
“Knowing” opens in 1959 with a troubled little girl named Lucinda writing down a page of seemingly random numbers to be included in a time capsule that’s being buried by her elementary school (which eerily reminded me of Haller Lake Elementary in Seattle… now defunct). Flash forward to 2009 – the time capsule is opened, and the page is given to young Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), whose father John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), a widowed M.I.T astrophysicist. Koestler quickly determines that the numbers are a code that reveals the exact location, date and death count of every major disaster in the last 50 years…with three left to go. He enlists the help of Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), daughter of the girl who wrote the prophecies fifty years before and her young daughter Abby (Lara Robinson) to attempt to prevent the predicted events from happening.
The first two disasters in the film - a plane crash and a subway derailment - are intensely vivid and graphic – certainly not for the squeamish or the little ones (or, I might add to the couple sitting next to me… NOT suitable for the little baby you had with you! I swear, if morons could fly, we’d never see the Sun).
It’s the revelation of the third and final disaster that this movie is all about. It’s an end-of-the-world scenario with a build-up which, admittedly, had me on the edge of my seat. And Nicholas Cage is up to his old tricks with a demented, compulsive intensity (which, incidentally, is pretty fun to watch – most notably when he smacks a tree with a baseball bat, and when screams “this is not a crank call” while calling in a warning of a terrorist attack).
Stranger still are the “Whisperers” - ethereal, tall, blonde Goths who looked like they had just auditioned for roles in “Twilight.” While their ultimate purpose seemed to be something that was added to this film because of negative focus group responses, there still has to be a tipping of the hat to the Powers-That-Be who dared introduce faith and hope into typical doomsday scenario.
“Knowing” is pretty heady stuff. Love it or hate it – you certainly won’t be bored.
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