Knowing
Posted on | October 10, 2009 | 6 Comments
You would think that “Knowing” is a movie that would actually let you know something. Like any teensy bit of information. Or at least tell you that knowing something will let you do something about it. But nooo. Not this movie.
You see, I’ve always like Nicolas Cage. Even with National Treasure, I thought: OK, so a little children’s fantasy movie never hurt anyone. I tried to remember the good old days of Gone in 60 Seconds and 8MM and wait for something more like him. And Knowing seemed a good movie, with a good idea for a plot: in 1959, a group of elementary school children make a time capsule imagining what the future would look like. One of them though only writes a series of numbers that seem to have no connection whatsoever. 50 years later, the capsule is dug up and every child that is now in elementary school receives one of the drawings. Caleb Koestler, son of an MIT professor, receives the paper with the numbers and from then on everything goes ballistic.
Apparently, the numbers are the exact dates and positions of the major catastrophes that took place in the last 50 years. While ‘googling’ them, John Koestler finds that 3 of them have not yet happened and realizes that the last one may well be the end of the world.
What is to like about this film: everything, apart form the last 10-15 minutes. I really did enjoy it as it was quite different from the usual “good guy saves the world when there are 13 seconds left” kind of thing. Nicolas Cage is a professor, very smart indeed, but not the usual ‘superhero’ you would expect. He is powerless in front of what could be called destiny and is struggling to find a way to solve it. Should’ve called Bruce Willis there, in my opinion. Also, the special effects are okay, quite impressive I might add.
What I disliked?
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Well, the ending, obviously, which, without being a cliche, is too weird and to ‘out there’ for me to enjoy. Some say it’s related to Scientology beliefs, but I really wouldn’t know that. I also disliked the so called “strangers” that appeared throughout the film and that are supposed to be aliens. They look really weird and…white and…ew. Plus, their constant following of the children is quite creepy.
All in all, it probably seems a better movie to sci-fi lovers. The ones that can actually like the aliens-we are not alone crap. I am sorry, but I don’t enjoy it that much. Plus, there are a LOT of plot holes in it that you can go past but can’t really ignore for good. I for one am not seeing this again, especially since I don’t think I would be able to stand again through the crappiest ending ever. There, I’ve said it.
For those of you thinking and believing that the truth is out there, enjoy!
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6 Responses to “Knowing”
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October 11th, 2009 @ 22:04
I will start saying that ideed this is not a golden masterpiece. I can tell you that you can’t possibly like it unless you are able to let yourself carried into a fantasy world, without limiting yourself to the boundaries of the world you know. It not a sci-fi, but fantasy, things close enough for too many to misunderstood. I guess it’s all about the level that you can accept change without being prepared an entire movie.
October 12th, 2009 @ 12:19
I didn’t like it either, i saw it mostly because it stars Nicolas Cage and i’ve got this idealistic theory that good (or at least above average) actors can’t star in shitty movies. They have to read the script first and if they don’t like it, they’ll say no, right? Because they always have other options. Most of the times it’s true, but then there are some unfortunate exceptions. Like Nicolas Cage and “Knowing”.
I think it doesn’t even deserve its 6.5 rating on imdb. I’d give it a 5 for being mildly entertaining in the first half an hour an so, until it gets completely ridiculous.
October 12th, 2009 @ 12:26
I think it may be a ‘guy’ movie…or at least a movie for people who really CAN go beyond the weird fantasy this movie is and find hidden meaning. I didn’t. Well, I didn’t really look for it that much either
October 13th, 2009 @ 12:41
Pure Crap, another N.Cage movie gone wrong. Since Gone in 60 sec and some other movies, all of his movies are crap.
SPOILER!!!
Everybody dies, yey, but for some children that are saved by alien pedophiles.
I want my 1 and a half hour back Cage!
October 14th, 2009 @ 12:38
I was to say simply that this is not “a movie for the feeble-minded”, not nearly a picture that utilises all ingredients necessary to create a blockbuster, for audiences eager to be skullfucked by the same disaster scenes, all ending in an idylic sunlit frame of utter primeval bliss surrounding two dumbly innamorated Adam and Eve characters. But it would be an injust generalization for my part to leave it unexplained.
There is no sex here, no gratuitous violence disguised as “pure survival instinct”, no prawlers being fought with, no baby seals being rescued. Do not expect this to be a classical “book of John” movie, for it is not. Only the feasible account of the events surrounding the death of a civilization that remains ignorant. And it should be so.
It is not a fantasy as some might put it, but pure application of the laws decreed by anticipation literature in it’s most scientific period, like the Protocol of First Contact, or the Inconstant Moon.
And if this movie seems boring, or too criptic, it is only because, while applying the rules of literature to cinematograpy, the arguments sustaining it’s feasibility are “lost in translation”.
Thus, it becomes a movie either for the anticipation afficionados, to whom this kind of narrative is “known space” or for those tired of being taken for fools and tricked into seeing “the destruction of Paris scene” over and over again in a classical Pulp-Fiction-EOTW Hollywood scenario.
October 14th, 2009 @ 22:55
Yeah, that’s why when he sees a man on fire, he calls him…”Hey!”. Let’s be honest, it’s not the lack of sex or violence that I was missing. it just seems to me it had some major flaws, including plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon. But maybe that’s just me…