KNOWING – Movie Review
KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE
*SPOILERS*
You “know” when you get in those moods, right? Specifically, when you’re looking to burn away some time while you’re waiting for something else to happen. Thankfully, there was Knowing, the latest film by Australian director Alex Proyas. Just like his other works The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot this film promises a thrill ride, and delivers…nothing much. Apart from a new toupee for Nicolas Cage.
The aforementioned Mr. Cage plays (insert stereotype middle-aged man here), a single parent troubled by his loss of wife and the irrational behavior of his son after he gets a piece of paper sealed in a time capsule from a crazy girl in the 50’s who ended up writing numbers in blood and suddenly there’s voices in the boys head and yadda, yadda, yadda, Rose Byrne, freaky albinos, mad mother, spooky autumn, dark forest at night, crazy stuff happens. After all this time, I’m not going to re-hash a by-the-numbers plot with you here. Main points include kids hearing voices, crazy people, Nicolas Cage’s lack of emotional range, secret codes, death and destruction, more freaky people, more voices, and lots of scenes involving a troubled Nicolas Cage, his estranged relationship with his father, his awkward relationship with his son, his disillusionment with his sister and his new hobby of Googling numbers to find out what they mean. In some ways, if Google didn’t exist, this movie would not have happened. Thanks Google!
How do we explain all these strange goings on? Is there some shady government agency using mind-control to subsume our youth? Maybe it’s a whole bunch of schizophrenic sufferers that happen to live in the same town? Not good enough? Need something a little more believable? How about aliens? ALIENS! Of course! All along I thought it was a group of the worst pedophiles in history who were attempting to lure children into their clutches by offering them polished river stones instead of candy! Now I “know” it’s a group of the worst intergalactic pedophiles with no concept of what “candy” is.
It's time...to act.
The apocalyptic visions of the future play well to the crucial moments of the film. It was heartening to see a film deliver on promises it sets up earlier on. There’s plenty to be scared about when the film finally gets to the fucking monkey. Freaky kids (who no-one likes and don’t have any sort of friends because let’s face it, if you have friends and a normal life nothing interesting is going to happen to you) who suddenly becoming hot-wired into a sort of intergalactic communication stream start jotting down lots of numbers. Why? God knows. It’s in the script or something. Enter Nicolas Cage and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black (any chance of a case for this free plug?) and soon enough, the answers all become clear. Yes, after a few too many scotches I too start to see things before they happen. Does this mean I’m a Jedi? No, it means that you’ve discovered a code that specifically plots death throughout human history. That’s pretty much the coolest piece of crazy-person paper ever. Wow! Wouldn’t it be cool to “know” when bad things are going to happen? If you “know” when it happens, wouldn’t you try and stop it? And since it’s taken over half the movie to figure this out, how many more events are there left to happen? I “know”! Three.
Head.
Desk.
Let’s count them off: 1. A passenger plane crash (for no apparent reason), 2. A passenger train crash, and 3. the destruction of humanity by a pissed off sun, which is the root of global warming, not over-pollution as those lefty bastards would have you believe. After this much set-up, and the BIG REVEAL that the numbers mean large-scale DEATH, why is it that we’re left with only a few options for mayhem? Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. After all, it’s a story, and the plot hinges on the fact that there’s not my time left. There was opportunity to explore what would have happened to someone who “knew” all along! Wouldn’t that have driven you crazier than dyslexic newspaper editor? I want to know the story about the person who “knew” these terrible events were going to happen for about 50 years! That’s a reason to feel bad for the crazy person, haunted and impotent against the laws of fate. Not Mr. Cage, and his absolute horror at the fact he wasted the last 10 years pining for his dead wife. The passenger plane crash was lovely, in a morbid kind of way. It was way better than the first episode of Lost, with more people on fire and less tropical polar bears. The subway crash in New York was a little hokey. Then comes the crispy planet, thankfully outlined in premonition, so as to give you just the right amount of anticipation. Hmm, that’s a thought…Since when did the voices turn into visions? And why is it always kids? Don’t believe children. They lie.
"Oh, my God...I'm full of stars!"
Proyas’ fetish for eerie, black-clad albinos and complex clockwork design is reminiscent of Dark City. Don’t get me wrong, I love his design ethic, strangled as it is by a lack of progress and development in the last 15 years, but hey, it’s his schtick. In fact, I’d consider the aliens prevalent in Knowing to be the good counterparts to the evil “Mysterious Strangers” who did all the sadistic “tuning” in the city in space. All it needed was a bit more Bruce Spence. I actually enjoyed the look of the philanthropic alien species, some sort of weird mating of a Kaminoan and a floodlight, but they offered the right amount of different. I really enjoyed the complexity of the alien vessel in it’s over-synchronized operation and movement. For a benevolent race they certainly do better than Spielberg’s electro-band tour bus passengers hell-bent on probing and brainwashing. “No, it’s OK, I liked being abducted, probed and returned after 40 years.” No such luck with these guys, they’re all about the survival of the human race. Although, I think there was a certain nihilism on the aliens part by dropping off a bunch of pre-pubescent coupled pairs on an alien world and then shooting back off into space. Would a shelter or food be too much to ask? Maybe an adult or two to do the heavy lifting? But I digress…
What’s good about Knowing? In short, the special effects. It’s quite well handled and not particularly jarring in what could have been a poor presentation of retouched pre-vis. Somehow I wasn’t as “thrilled” by some of the spectacular crashes as I was in, say, Final Destination, but Knowing was competent in it’s ability to provide dramatic tension at key points. Tension that never feels completely justified as Cage just seems to remove credibility from what could otherwise have been a very tense sci-thriller. Eventually I found myself waiting for the “Cigarette Smoking Man” to walk out of the shadows and do something creepy, or have “Deputy Director Skinner” call Mr. Cage into his office and berate him about his handling of the case. Knowing suffers from a case of the “could-a-beens” rather badly. Certain creepy elements that showed a lot of promise earlier on wrapped up in a boring kind of way, and Rose Byrne didn’t add much, but seemed to play hysterical rather well. And what happens to hysterical people in movies? Especially when they rush off alone…
Nic Cage in upcoming Ron Jeremy biopic (...thanks Qdog!)
Overall I was let down by the acting in Knowing. It’s hard to empathize with the emotional stories of characters if even they seem to be out-acted by the walls. I’ll call Cage out on this one: I found his house more emotional than he was. The decrepit, run-down state of the half-renovated house showed me more of what to expect from the character than some half-assed attempt at a quasi-suicidal, alcoholic crazy-person. The adults in the production merely serviced the plot, although the children did quite well behaving a freaky little radio towers for voices from the ether.
The best X-Files movie yet, and I didn’t even have to suffer through the combined talents of David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and Billy Connelly. Although, Nicolas Cage was really awful…
Rating: Shite +
Do you agree? Do you disagree? Feedback on the blog and talk to Quinny about it, because I’ll be sucking back Johnny Walker Black and crying about my shitty life. Just like Nicolas Cage.
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Nicholas Cage…I have nothing more to say
Best special effect in the movie….. Nicholas Cage’s hair!
Slightly weird film. Nicholas was pointless as was everything else, plot or story wise. After the predestination of disaster is determined (Cage did try to stop things and even directly intervened with the same number dead.) it is really more of an as it happened doco, with the world inescapably being destroyed. efectively the film as a drama is over at the 2/3rds point with just a little ‘alien tension’ added to keep the viewers attention. The last third is a drawn out piece of disaster porn.
While not trying to be over clever I feel the film would of been more interesting if cage did have an affect (lets say saving a life at the plane crash and causing the train accident to happen elsewhere or something) that would have allowed some form of tension to remain. He and the rest of the world can still die but at least the film wouldn’t die at the 2/3rds point.