Tag: C
Knowing – Review
by john on Jul.26, 2009, under Reviews
Apocalyptic/Disaster movies are a cinematic staple. Human determination is pitted against the unstoppable forces of nature much like my own struggle against crappy movies. Knowing is half the battle.
When was the last good Nicolas Cage movie? The Rock? Con Air? Raising Arizona? He’s obviously moved on to become to poster child of crap-ass cinema. The good news for him is that disaster movies don’t need great acting. None of them are ever going to be up for best picture, and exist only because train wrecks don’t offer up enough destruction.
Knowing has its share of problems. Nick Cage is the least of them. The basic plot goes like this: Back in 1959, a crazy schoolgirl writes a bunch of numbers for a time capsule assignment. Fifty years later, the time capsule is opened. Mr. Cage (obviously) gets the creepy numbers and proceeds to decrypt them with the help of Mr. Plot Convenience. The numbers happen to reveal the location, date, and casualty count for every major disaster in the US. Except for the last three. And by last three, I mean last three ever. Mr. Cage realizes that these numbers are a warning to humanity and goes to act confused the rest of the movie.
Now if your thinking caps are on, you may be asking why a warning message to humanity was buried for fifty years, only to be opened three days before the end of the world. Knowing doesn’t know, or refuses to tell, so I had to add it to my long list of Things That Don’t Make Sense.
Like all Apocalyptic movies, there’s a religious element in play. It’s pretty subtle up until the end where either your beliefs or your intelligence (or both) will be offended. It’s pretty obvious what statement Alex Proyas is making, but it’s not exactly a good one. But hey, at least it’s not political, so he gets a few points for being different.
Knowing is a stupid movie, but doesn’t know it. I’d tell you to avoid it completely, but the ending is so unexpected and strange I can’t discount the whole thing. If you’ve seen it, let me know what you thought.
Grade: C-
