Knowing DVD: Review By Shelley

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS.

THE GOOD AND BAD:

It is hard to talk about the good things about Knowing without going into the bad so I have combined the two categories so I can expound on each at the same time and it will make sense.

The photography in this film is excellent and the standard DVD looks high-definition. I was not impressed with the special effects however. They just did not seem to match with the sometimes stunning cinematography. The script was good in parts but in others it failed in streamlining the intelligent feel. After the film was over I felt as if it had been directed by two separate directors, one for the first three quarters and another for the remaining one-fourth. For most of the movie you had a nice flow of events but then toward the end it felt rushed and undeveloped.

THE FILM:

The movie begins in 1959 with school children drawing pictures for the time capsule being buried at a local elementary school. One girl in the class, Lucinda, is suffering from what seems like a mental illness and does not seem to like the idea of a time capsule. When they are asked to draw a picture of the future, Lucinda begins writing numbers at a furious rate. The teacher looses patience with her and takes her paper before she can complete the second page of numbers. During the ceremony to bury the capsule, Lucinda disappears. The teacher of the class finally finds her in a closet and she has literally clawed numbers into the door thus finishing her number sequence.

Fast forward to fifty years later and we are introduced to John (Nicolas Cage) and Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) Koestler. Caleb is a student at the elementary school where the time capsule was buried and will be one of the lucky kids that receives an envelope from same. Of course we all know that he receives Lucinda’s and does not know what to think of it but realizes it is important. Instead of giving it back to the school, he brings it home to look at it in more detail. Of course his father finds it and begins to try to figure out what the numbers mean. This is where some of my problems with the movie begin. John Koestler is suppose to be a highly intelligent professor at MIT so I can believe he begins to figure out what the numbers represent fairly quickly but all he deciphers is the date and number of people killed. Why does it take him so long to figure out what the other numbers mean and why isn’t he more concerned about them? Any scientist in an attempt to ‘prove’ numbers or calculations look at the problem as a whole instead of in pieces. Then there are the last two characters. Wouldn’t anyone think they are significant because they are entered last and look different than any of the other numbers? I really do not think I am getting bogged down in details because this was abundantly obvious to me on the surface of the film. After John figures out the numbers represent dates, number of people killed, longitude and latitude of the event, he witnesses a plane crash. This happens a few feet in front of him. I found this ironic because he just figured out that the paper gives the exact location of events. The plane crash was not done well in my opinion and looked very computer generated. As things progress, John decides to find out about the girl who wrote the numbers and finds out she took her own life so decides to search for her daughter.

Meanwhile John’s son Caleb has begun seeing a strange man and hearing voices. We come to find out these are the ‘whisper’ people. I would have liked to see a little more development of these characters because they are interesting. I think they wanted the audience to be ‘in the dark’ about their origins but it was very obvious early on. Caleb accompanies his father to speak with Lucinda’s daughter and meets her granddaughter, Abby. The two children realize almost immediately they both have been hearing the ‘whisper’ people, their parents just do not realize it yet. After visiting the place Lucinda took her life, John realizes the last two characters on the paper are not two threes (duh) but two E’s written backwards and they mean ‘everyone else’. This is where the film changes and becomes rushed. This is also where I have another problem with the writing of this film. They should have not made John astrophysics astrophysicist because at this point he looks like he was not as smart as he is suppose to be. He has predicted the solar flares of the sun would one day cause harm to the earth but he did not see the recent signs, cell phone/communication interruption, hot weather in October, etc. John gets separated from his son but believes the numbers scratched into the back of the door by Lucinda will give him his location. It ends up being the area of Lucinda’s trailer and goes there to find the ‘whisper’ people have brought his son and Abby there as well. By this point in the film you have figured out what is going to happen and that the ‘whisper’ people are only there to save the children. They need to leave which means the ‘event’ is happening soon but instead of ‘waiting for the inevitable’ John decides to race back to his estranged father’s house to be with his family. Conveniently he makes it just in time for the cataclysmic event. I am not trying to say this ending was necessarily bad; it just was all too scripted and proper for my taste. It would have been better had they deleted some of the meaningless scenes in the beginning and spent more time on the ending.

SPECIAL FEATURES: Standard DVD

Audio commentary with director Alex Proyas

Knowing all: the making of a futuristic thriller

Visions of the apocalypse

REPLAY VALUE:

Some replay value but unfortunately I would say it is below average, after you have seen it once the ‘thrill’ and build up would be gone thus removing some of the movies appeal.

BOTTOM LINE:

I am a fan of Nicholas Cage but was unable to see this in theaters so I was excited that it finally came out on DVD. I did not necessarily have any expectations about the film, but I have to say I was disappointed when it was all over. I just wanted it to be better than it ended up being if that makes any sense. I do recommend the film however don’t expect to be blown away. All in all it does come in as an above average film but it had the potential for being a blockbuster.

I read many critic reviews after seeing Knowing and many of them describe this as one of the best science fiction thrillers they have seen in some time. It did not seem like a science fiction film to me. Yes there were some elements that could be construed into that category, but overall it is more of just a thriller/action/drama. If you are looking for a great sci-fi movie I suggest you watch the classics such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Matrix, Blade Runner or Alien(s), Knowing cannot compare.

Thanks for reading.