‘Knowing’ movie review: Nicolas Cage sees the future in Alex Proyas thriller

Alex Proyas’ Knowing gets pretty ridiculous in spots, and it has this general air of silliness throughout. But it also has one of the most effective scenes of terror I’ve ever seen in a film: a positively chilling sequence that’s only a few minutes long but works wonderfully on its own terms and turns the rest of the rest of the film into an engrossing experience. I can recommend the film for this scene alone.

But I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it. Nicolas Cage’s professor has deduced the time and place a catastrophic event is going to happen. He does the opposite of what any rational person would do, and drives out to the place, at the time, knowing something awful is about to happen but not knowing what exactly that is.

And then – wham! – that something awful happens. But it comes out of nowhere; even though we know something is going to happen, we’re still surprised.

And shocked. Proyas films the catastrophic event, incredibly, in one long, uninterrupted single take; the most effective shot of its kind since Children of Men. Our stomachs drop. 

We watch death and disaster with apathy on the nightly news but here’s a PG-13 Nic Cage film that’s able to truly terrify us; it speaks for the power of cinema. And it belongs in a better movie. Children of Men was a great film, and great sci-fi; Knowing isn’t quite either. So how’s the rest of the film?

The movie opens in 1959, as a class of schoolchildren prepares pictures for a time capsule to be opened in 50 years. But instead of a picture, Lucinda (Lara Robinson), in a kind of frenzy, jots down a paper full of numbers before her teacher stops her. 

Later on, she finishes her work by clawing some numbers in a basement door. (Now, the teacher sees this weird diagram of numbers, why in the world would she place it in the time capsule – to creep someone out in 50 years?)

Flash-forward those 50 years, and Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury) pulls those numbers out of the time capsule. He also starts hearing voices, like Lucinda did in the opening scenes. He shows the strange diagram to his father Ben (Cage), who dismisses it until he notices one particular sequence of numbers: 9 11 01. 

So he digs deeper, and discovers that the document details every last major disaster in the last 50 years (I wonder how exactly they qualify these disasters). Ben notes that the next disaster is coming up tomorrow, so he drops Caleb off with his sister and heads out (to prevent it?)

Silliness aside, this is a compelling premise. There are also creepy albino men in trench coats, surrealistic dreams, strange black stones and other sci-fi hints. For all its failings, Knowing sticks to its guns; the ending, sure to be divisive, certainly does not go where you might expect it to. How successfully it pulls everything together and answers all its questions, however, is up for debate. It’s at least interesting, if not fascinating.

Proyas has made one masterpiece (Dark City) along with some other visually impressive work (The Crow, I, Robot). Knowing is one of his lesser efforts, both as a whole and in visual terms; it certainly looks good, but there’s some poor use of CGI, and the contemporary setting doesn’t allow for the imagination of his other, futuristic, films.

But that one scene saves the movie, and I think Knowing will become a cult item in future years. It’s certainly something to be seen, if not entirely appreciated.

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Jason Pirodsky

Jason Pirodsky has been writing about the Prague film scene and reviewing films in print and online media since 2005. A member of the Online Film Critics Society, you can also catch his musings on life in Prague at expats.cz and tips on mindfulness sourced from ancient principles at MaArtial.com.