SYNOPSIS:
In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule but one mysterious girl fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead. Fifty years later, Professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts every major disaster of the past 50 years. As John further unravels the document's chilling secrets, he realizes the document foretells three additional events - the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve John and his son.
MOVIE REVIEW:
There are simply too many apocalyptic and disaster theme movies out there that by randomly pointing your finger in any direction in a decent video store will led you to one title or more. "Knowing" borrows much of its ideas from movies such as Spielberg’s remake of Wars of the World, Michael Bay’s Armageddon, Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow and the recent M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and repackage it as a 'science versus faith' apocalyptic thriller.
Now the tough part is whether you accept the somewhat bizarre and convenient conclusion.
Nicolas Cage plays MIT professor, John Koestler who makes a startling discovery from a sheet of paper which is retrieved out of a time capsule that was sealed at his son’s elementary school decades ago. To his amazement, it contained encoded messages which predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years.
Now the problem doesn’t lie with Cage’s kooky hairstyle this time, to set the record straight, he puts in a credible, subdued performance as a husband who has to cope with the recent loss of his wife. As a result, Koestler spends his nights boozing while trying to put up a strong front for the sake of his young son and interestingly, the story has hints of him as an atheist.
However, this concept was never really build on as the story blandly proceeds from a creepy start to a desperate attempt by Koestler to find the descendant of the original writer who wrote the code. All these while, the plot has always walked the tightrope between a no-brainer disaster thriller and a plain sci-fi alien invasion plotline. It doesn’t add much to the suspense level when you had whispering men in black looming at every corner and doing the disappearing act now and then.
Despite the less than stellar plotting, the production values here especially deserved a mention. The set design (which had Melbourne standing in for Boston for most of the shots), stunning believable CG effects and Marco Beltrami’s score to the excellent child actors never fails to impress.
Director Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City) knew how to present this as a kinetic race-against-time thriller and also had an eye for visual when he stages a massive disturbing CG sequence involving a plane crash and a destructive subway accident that will stuck in your mind long after this DVD is ejected.
It’s a pity the Australian’s last feature movie (remarkably 5 years back) I, Robot suffers from the same fate as things start to crumble apart by the third act as the story struggles to close with a big revelation that seems a better fit for sci-fi channel or more suitably, as the sequel to the original X-Files movie.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Audio Commentary by Director – Proyas is joined by an identified person in this commentary as the duo talks about the themes in Knowing, filming anecdotes and other information nuggets that you might find interesting to know.
The Making of Futuristic Thriller – This 12 minutes feature includes the usual cast and crew interviews and behind-the-scenes particularly of interest is how the plane crash sequence is done.
Vision of Apocalypse – Unless you possessed a fascination in apocalyptic theory, I suggest you skip this dry 17 minutes discussion by scholars and experts.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
You will be impressed with the rich and lush colors with this DVD transfer. Even the darker scenes are sharp and detailed. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix also impresses with its surround sound in the movie’s two major action sequences.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Linus Tee
Posted on 21 July 2009
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