Knowing
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Nicolas Cage, Rose ByrneBrand: CAGE,NICOLAS
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 121 minutes
Published: 2009-07-01
DVD Release Date: 2009-07-07
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Knowing
Movie Review: Not flawless, but a highly satisfying thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
Nicolas Cage hasn't had much luck in the land of the mainstream in recent years, and frothy duds along the lines of Next and Ghost Rider certainly haven't done much to alter this pattern. Enter Knowing, a sci-fi flick that took a very similar marketing approach to Cloverfield, releasing mysterious, subject-veiling trailers which left the viewers wondering exactly what sort of movie it was they were previewing. It is, in theory, a dangerously hit-or-miss approach to advertising, but it may be appropriate in this case. Knowing's opening scene occurs in the mid-50's, with an elementary school teacher explaining to her students that they must draw a picture of what they believe the future will be like and then place the drawings in a time capsule, which will be opened several years from then. A seemingly disturbed little girl has other plans. Rather than drawing a picture of the future, she furiously jots down a series of numbers, and we are given an indication that she is hearing voices telling her to do so. At the actual burying of the time capsule, the girl vanishes, only to be discovered in a hallway closet by her teacher as she continues to scribble the numbers onto the closet door with her fingernails; she then tearfully asks her teacher to `make it stop.' Fast-forward several years later, and we are of course at the reopening of this time capsule, and of course our protagonist-or, more accurately, the protagonist's son-obtains the mysterious little girl's list of numbers. Cage's character, the recently widowed astrophysicist John, doesn't believe there's any significance to the scribbled number sequence, but of course the wild series of events that follows proves otherwise. One fateful night, John happens to notice a pattern to the numbers-that they align with the dates of nearly every major global disaster and tragedy since the date it was written-plus a handful that haven't happened yet. John then goes through the by-the-numbers sequence of trying to get everyone else to believe him, which of course throughout the majority of the movie no one does. But when the first disaster that the number sequence predicts actually happens, John gains a deeper understanding of what he's come across. All the while, Caleb continuously comes across a pale-faced, trenchcoated man who seems to be the source behind mysterious voices ringing in his head and a series of horrifying visions of chaos and destruction. Knowing does an excellent job of keeping the audience's attention, and most shreds of plot predictability are drowned out by the sheer mystery and suspense that pulses throughout the entirety of the film. Knowing is an action-thriller (with more thrill than action), but it also succeeds at maintaining strong undertones of eeriness and dread, and in that light it nearly comes off as a high-class pseudo-horror film; it's the subtle, slow burn type of horror moviegoers don't see much of nowadays. M. Night Shyamalan should be taking notes. One of Knowing's strongest assets is the one thing it has that most movies of its kind don't: genuine shock value. Knowing is shocking until its very end (which is particularly shocking, not in exactly what happens, but what happens to the story's characters), and although the movie's `big picture' might head in the general direction of what viewers might predict, it's unlikely that the final outcome of the characters will be expected. Nicolas Cage is the star, but he may be the film's weakest link. Cage's occasionally awkward, cheeseball approach to acting is at times an ill fit for this particular role, and it leaves one to wonder what the movie could've been in different, more capable hands. Regardless, the film works in nearly every other aspect, and it keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, guessing what'll happen next, like any good horror/action/thriller flick should. Knowing is a movie about tragedy, so it's only natural that many of its events are indeed tragic, but it does a much better job of maintaining a sense of hope in the wake of tragedy than wholly miserable movies like Premonition and 28 Weeks Later did. In the murk of today's teenybop horror and torture porn, Knowing actually does what the likes of The Happening set out to do, and it does it in a much more tasteful and much less melodramatically morbid manner. It's a rarity in the 00's: an end-of-the-world movie that actually works.
Summary of Knowing
Genre: Action/Adventure
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 7-JUL-2009
Media Type: DVD
Nicolas Cage stars in this largely unsatisfying science-fiction tale that begins as a taut and spooky story concerning psychic legacies and ends up falling back on Steven Spielberg's old, cosmic playbook for default explanations about weird phenomena. Cage stars as astrophysicist and widower John Koestler, whose young son attends a school where a 50-year-old time capsule is dug up and opened. Koestler's son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), is given an envelope from the capsule containing a sheet of paper inscribed with seemingly-random numbers. Koestler interprets groupings of the numbers as prophesies (made in 1959) of disasters leading up to a globally catastrophic event late in 2009. Moreover, some of the later tragedies involve him or members of his family, suggesting the paper was meant to fall into his and Caleb's hands. That?s not the only freaky thing drawing father and son in a direction they really don't want to go. Among other things, a quartet of mute strangers keeps showing up with a powerful interest in Caleb's whereabouts, and the daughter and granddaughter of the little girl who originally scribbled those numbers in 1959 are under the shadow of a separate prediction of doom. Everything goes swimmingly until it's time for director Alex Proyas (The Crow) to begin tying up all the strings, and cliches start falling like rain. On the plus side, Knowing includes a couple of breathtaking scenes of calamity, the most horrifying (and realistic) of which is a jet crash the likes of which has never been committed to film. --Tom Keogh
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