KNOWING (2009)

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"Knowing … what I know now - it is worth watching."

John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) an MIT Professor teaching Astro-Physics, has somewhat of a bleak outlook on life because of his wife dying in an accidental hotel fire. He tries to keep everything pieced together for the sake of his young son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) but it is obvious he struggles. A school project see's Caleb return home with a strange piece of paper that had been buried in a time capsule for the last fifty years. At first appearing to be just a random set of numbers, it is not long before the Professor see's a pattern forming. This paper predicts all the major disasters in the last fifty years and exact death tolls. It also shows some future events which have not yet happened. Now it's a race against time to decode the final parts and the one part that was omitted from the original paper.

What lets this film down a little is Cage; he starts the film looking down, depressed and miserable. Well he stays that way all through, which spoiled the film slightly. If he had been happier at the beginning and then changed when he realised what he had stumbled across, that would have been fair enough. But his dour attitude didn't enamor him to me at all - smile for goodness sake. Your wife died in a fire, but you are alive, your son is alive and you are obviously doing a job you enjoy. There are a few plus points floating around. The most animated and happy he seems is while teaching a class, but even then he drifts off into a morose world of 'sh*t happens'.

The plot in itself is I found interesting, though the code was a bit simple to say the least. Not sure you needed an MIT Professor to decode it, but just somebody with an interest. Where it came from is the intriguing part, though I doubt it will take that long for most people to work out.

That being said it is a good film, it has some interesting action/disaster scenes but the ending is a bit dire. Not sure in all certainty what they tried to say at the end, if anything.

Apart from Cage, most of the acting was fine. I can't say anybody stood out for me, there were no stellar performances. People just played their parts, which is why to a certain extent you expect more from the 'Star'. It was obvious the film was centered on him, so he should have put some passion into it and at least some emotion. 'Wet fish syndrome' again, not sure why but actors go around like they have been smacked in the face with a wet fish. Expressionless acting almost, one look that apart from an eyebrow movement doesn't change.

Directing and Editing I thought were fine, some of the visuals were spectacular on times. Though the film had a darkness to it overall, which I found a bit odd. Later I think I understood why, because of what was about to happen. But with everything looking a bit dull and miserable, it didn't help that Cage was the same - though I suppose he fitted into the film.

Hard to give comparison with this film without giving it away. One plus point for the film overall I have to say, is I had two theories. It wasn't until the end that it came together. In a way a plus point to the whole film was that either theory could have worked.

Certainly worth a watch as it manages to hold your interest and keeps you intrigued.