Knowing: Review (no spoilers)
The nineties were filled with great, action-extreme-one-man-army flicks like Die Hard 2 & 3, Terminator 2, Demolition Man, True Lies and the like. Nearing the end of the decade, three badass movies came out almost one after the other; The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off. These three films somehow catapulted Nicholas Cage to the upper echelons of the genre. And even the though the genre quickly faded shortly thereafter, nobody bothered to tell him.
Since then, Cage has starred in films that seem like remnants of a lost era; Windtalkers (WTF?), National Treasure (sort of good), Ghost Rider (WTF?), Next (WTF?) and Bangkok Dangerous (WTF?). I always chalked up these films as, more or less, dues, that needed to get paid in order to make other films like Adaptation (awesome), Lord of War (pretty good), The Weatherman (very interesting) and World Trade Center (heard it was great).
Needless to say, when I saw the trailers for Knowing, I immediately thought that Nicholas Cage was back at getting the dues paid and immediately wrote it off.
Then, I just happened to peek at Ebert’s review, which gave it 4 stars.
WTF?
I didn’t read the review, but was immediately filled with conviction that had to see this thing. Ebert may have gotten a little soft since his hospital stay, but to give a 4 star review to what seemed like a run of the mill Cage movie was certainly a surprise. I called Brian up, and we set out to see it that weekend.
What first prompted my intrigue about the film when watching the movie was when a credit revealed that Alex Proyas was the director. This is the guy responsible for The Crow, Dark City, and I, Robot; three very unique dark/sci-fi/mixed genre pictures.
The film begins on a bit of a horror note as we’re introduced to young girl who, plagued with hearing a cacophony of indecipherable whispers, goes into a trance as she writes a series of numbers on a piece of paper. This paper is picked up by the teacher, and placed in a time capsule to be opened up 50 years later. Fast forward 50 years and we have Nicholas Cage’s character, whose near-deaf son now goes to the school. The capsule is opened up and all of the kids get one page; of course, Cage’s son gets the page with numbers.
As the trailer shows, Cage’s character begins to realize that they aren’t a series of random numbers, but they are the dates of all major catastrophic events since the 1950’s followed by the number of people who were killed. This leads him on a journey to try and figure out who wrote it, why and maybe prevent future catastrophes from happening. It’s nothing really out of the ordinary when you consider the premise.
At this point in the movie, I was starting to feel the movie drag. Cage did a few of his Cage-isms, which were humorous yet predictable, and the film really wasn’t doing anything too far outside of my expectations.
Then, 20 minutes in, an incredible moment occurs that had me, and the rest of the audience, spellbound. I felt like the movie was daring me to take it seriously. I put my skepticism aside, and said, “Ok, I’m on board, what else you got?”
The movie continues on to make revelations I will not disclose here. All I’ll say is that the film is a journey; a journey both in ideas and the execution of these ideas. Proyas finds that place where a grand concept is more than just presented intellectually, but emotionally too.
When leaving the theater, Brian asked what I thought and my first response was that I think Cage was a miscast. I still think this, but unfortunately this is a really hard, and almost unfair criticism. Cage is a good actor, very good even. The problem here isn’t Cage’s performance, as much as it is his reputation. This post-era action-man image the general public has of him, including myself, brings baggage to the screen that distracts from the film at hand.
I understand that, from a practical sense, the movie needs star power in order to get the thing made and distributed. In this regard, maybe Cage is the right balance between said power and that every-man quality. I honestly really can’t think of someone else who would be able to make this thing happen other than Cage.
I guess, ultimately, Knowing’s primary flaw is that of marketing. Combining Proyas’ mixed genre approach to storytelling with Cage’s action-man reputation creates a new monster that I don’t think the marketing departments were ready to tackle. Their approach sent out the wrong message, brought the wrong people into the theater, and helped foster a negative, or at least convoluted, word-of-mouth campaign.
If you do see this film, please try to put all of that aside, and experience the film for what it is.