Knowing: Review By kyle_hannah

Well after incredible movies like Dark City, The Crow and I Robot i am officially perplexed at how Alex Proyas has brought us a steaming pile of poorly written plot complete with terrible acting, lame and overbearing christian overtones and the worst and chessiest film ending i've seen recently. I was very intrigued by Knowing after watching the trailer and while i used to hate Nicolas Cage's acting i've grown accustomed to him and am probably the only persaon alive who enjoyed The Wicker Man (2006). Knowing from the trailer looked like an intelligent thriller something with a good pace, something that keeps asking you questions while bombarding you with intense and well choreographed special effects. What we have here is a movie that preaches like a gospel sermon against science and for God which i would't mind if

1. They kept it subtle and not a slap in the face of logic

2. The action was entertaining enough to let the bad plot seem less bad

We'll move on to the acting, when the best actor in the entire movie who gives off the most convincing performance is little 10 year old Chandler Canterbury you know your movie has problems. Nicolas Cage as usual plays Nicolas "f*cking" Cage no emotion, no personality, he's always the same you cannot differenciate John Koestler, Ben Gates, and Cris Johnson they are all the same character, in Knowing Cage is as wooden as a telephone pole. It pains me ever so deeply as a fan of Rose Byrne to write about how irritating her screeching and crying was throughout the whole movie, picture an adult version of Dakota Fannings character in War Of The Worlds and you have this illogical, and stupid character Diana that Rose Byrne portrays. Supporting actors? What supporting actors they appear for maybe a total of 3 minutes the entire film Johns mom,dad,sister, and best friend are pointless characters with no importance but at least Nadia Townsend gave her character some personality granted she was only onscreen for 2 minutes or so. Chandler Canterbury pulls off his character well a cute kid with some lovable attitude and then owns the creepy kid portion of the character aswell if only the writing was better.

Speaking of writing Knowing contains some of the most piss poor and predictable writing so far this year. The plot twist is so far fetched, out of left field and BEYOND LAME! You guys remember the twist in The Forgotten well this movie has the same one. The movie starts strong then has this giant religion is superior to science message it forces down your throat like an annoying Jehovah's Witness who won't get the f*ck off of your porch. SPOILER ALERT if you really care the whole time all i was thinking is "it can't be aliens", if they pull a The Forgotten i will be so pissed" then Nic Cage falls to his knees and yells up at the sky as a GODDAMNED SPACESHIP appears out of the mist! I slapped my head and began to laugh hysterically at the biggest cop out twist you could possibly have. Then it got worse as if the "you are all going to hell for not believing in the prophecy of the lord God" wasn't intrusive or overbearing enough the "aliens" take the little kids in their spaceship and the aliens turn out to be ANGELS...F*CKING ANGELS! They drop off the kids on what i assume is earth two and reveal that there were mutliple spaceships picking up kids and they all brought two of each animal. The movie ends with the two kids walking towards the tree of knowledge from the book of Genesis while everyone on earth good or bad is incinerated. At that point i said f*ck this far fetched, lame piece of unoriginal christian crap! Don't get me wrong i don't hate christian overtones in movies it's cool just so long as it's subtle and not so in your face for example The Chronicles Of Narnia or The Matrix. When you start cursing science as the downfall of mankind and doom everyone except a few kids to the apocalypse and then end the movie with the children frollicing in the garden of eden it's time to get a reality check.

I could accept the ridiculously predictable plot if the action was fun and consistant but it's not. There are 3 action scenes total each one lasts about 2 minutes long. The plane crash and Subway incidents occur at the beginning of the film so for the rest of the poorly paced movie you get nothing but religious discussions and bad plot twists. Proyas gives us one really awesome scene at the end when the world ignites and is destroyed but sadly it lasts for less then two minutes and is an obvious attempt at saving the movie as this occurs right after the lame ass alien twist.

Marco Beltrami's music scores are bad aswell they sound like they belong on The Outer Limits or some other 50's sci fi they are totally distracting from the scene. It's clear that Proyas wanted to make an Epic Science Fiction film what with the cheesy music and giant amount of weird plot twists but this movie just fails on so many levels. Knowing fails as an action driven popcorn flick, Knowing fails as an intelligent thriller, Knowing fails as an interesting Sci Fi, KNOWING FAILS PERIOD!!! I can honestly say Roger Ebert has lost so much credibility by giving this heap a 4/4 and calling it one of the best Sci Fi movies he's ever seen. If you are some giant anti science christian supremacy person then Knowing will be your #1 favourite but if you expected a smart, action packed thriller with plausability and entertainment heh heh then go see Watchmen again. Knowing plays like an M Night Shaymalan movie a good idea ruined by bad pacing, lame plot twists, predictability, and poor acting. Bring on Terminator Salvation already!