Knowing (2009) Movie Review

You don’t get more hit-and-miss than Nicolas Cage. The prolific actor seems to be in three or four movies a year, and it’s usually a good year if one of his films turns out to be a moderate hit. Nicolas Cage movies without the words “National” or “Treasure” in the title just don’t seem to do very well at the box office nowadays. Cage’s latest, the Alex Proyas-directed “Knowing” doesn’t seem to have the makings of a big hit, and early indicators (including a general lack of buzz in the fanboy community) are that it will turn out like Cage’s last sci-fi themed effort, the Philip K. Dick inspired “Next”. I kind of enjoyed “Next” myself, but then again, I might have been the only one.

In “Knowing”, Cage plays John Koestler, a widowed MIT professor still pining for his wife who died in a fire recently. Koestler has a son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), a curious boy with a slight hearing impairment who is also not dealing very well with his mother’s passing. The Koestlers’ isolated life (their only connections to the outside world that exists beyond their grief are John’s sister Grace (Nadia Townsend) and a co-worker at MIT) gets complicated when, during the unearthing of a time capsule at Caleb’s school, the young boy comes into possession of a letter containing what seems to be a series of random numbers written by a curious girl name Lucinda (Lara Robinson) at the same school 50 years earlier. During one of his drunken nights, the grief-stricken John takes an interest in Caleb’s time capsule find, and quickly realizes that the numbers are not random at all and have in fact been foretelling disasters for the last 50 years.

For John, the letter’s prophecies convince him that life and death are not as random as he originally thought. Not only has the letter foretold every disaster that has happened in the 50 years since it was written, but it also foretold the events that led to the death of John’s wife. Chance and fate and “shit happens”, it appears, are not nearly as fickle as John had come to believe. With the help of Lucinda’s daughter, single mother Diana (Rose Byrne), John attempts to discover the meaning of Lucinda’s final prediction, which seems to have ended prematurely. And what exactly do these prophecies have to do with the appearances of beach-blond strangers in black trenchcoats? And why do these mysterious figures seem to be whispering to Caleb as they once did to poor Lucinda, who was believed to have gone mad?

Surprisingly, for a movie being heavily sold as a CGI-heavy disaster film, much of “Knowing” seems content to be a character-driven suspense-thriller about a father and son dealing with the aftermath of a terrible lost. But don’t let that fool you; this is very much a big-budget Hollywood film, and it can do CGI disasters pretty well, too. The trailers have already given away one crucial sequence in the movie which occurs at the end, but before that, there are two major set pieces, one involving a plane crash and the other in a New York subway. The plane crash is brutal and amazing, shot in a style that reminds you Alex Proyas is a visual filmmaker of notable skill when he’s not allowing battling robots to run amok onscreen. “Knowing” may be rated PG-13, but I would imagine the plane crash might have pushed the boundaries of that rating mightily.

One thing that does bode poorly for “Knowing” is that audiences may be expecting more “Armageddon”-esque disaster sequences from the film, and who can blame them, as the trailers certainly promises that kind of devastation. Alas, it is not that kind of film. The plane crash and the subway sequence really accounts for all the disasters that happens in the film until the climax. Instead, Proyas has managed to craft a nice suspense-thriller with well-drawn characters and heavy elements of sci-fi (especially at the end). Although he’s never tackled the genre before, Proyas should definitely consider doing a horror movie at least once in his career. There are a couple of incredibly intense, spooky sequences in “Knowing” that took me by surprise.

The script by Proyas and his co-writers spend enough quality time with the Koestlers that we come to care about father and son as events progress out of control and ominous fate threatens to swallow them. The appearance of the Whisper People further adds mystery to the film, and we’re never really sure what is going on. The Big Reveal that explains everything will either have you chuckling or gazing in wonderment at the screen, or a mixture of both. To be honest, I’m still not sure what to think of the Big Reveal. I still can’t decide if it’s a major cop-out or a pretty slick twist that saves the day. You’ll have to decide for yourself when you see it.

“Knowing” is certainly more character-oriented than a lot of its peers, and a lot of that credit goes to Cage, who is excellent in the lead. In fact, this might be one of Cage’s better acting works in a long while. I do have issues with Rose Byrne’s character, though, specifically the lack of depth. The script seems to have only two gears for Byrne’s Diana – utterly confused and scared, and utterly frantic and scared. The role as written could have been played by anyone, and it’s a shame Byrne wasn’t given more to do. Still, the script gets credit for not taking the obvious route with the Wayland character, in particular her relationship with John, which never becomes cliché. They are simply two single parents who have teamed up to uncover the truth because it means saving their children, and kudos to the film for never forcing a contrived romance.

In a lot of ways, “Knowing” exceeded my expectations. I went into it expecting a CGI-filled disaster movie with explosions every few second, but instead got a terrifically paced suspense-thriller with well-drawn characters. Proyas continues to impress with his visual acumen, and certainly the airplane crash and its raw, immediate aftermath is one of “Knowing’s” highlights. The film is a bit of a slow-mover at the beginning, but it does pick up steam and builds toward an unpredictable Third Act, before settling into a curiously muted conclusion. You expect a movie about the end of the world to go out with a bang, but “Knowing” and Alex Proyas have other ideas.

Alex Proyas (director) / Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White, Stuart Hazeldine, Alex Proyas (screenplay)
CAST: Nicolas Cage … John Koestler
Chandler Canterbury … Caleb Koestler
Rose Byrne … Diana Wayland
D.G. Maloney … The Stranger
Lara Robinson … Lucinda Embry / Abby Wayland
Nadia Townsend … Grace Koestler
Alan Hopgood … Rev. Koestler