Review: Knowing

Knowing (2009)
starring: Nicholas Cage, Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury, Lara Robinson
dir. Alex Proyas

This is not a movie that can be simply dismissed. It advertises itself as, "man figures out that awful things are going to happen and must stop them." Which it is, but it goes way beyond that and in the end, no matter how flawed this movie is, it becomes something that is interesting and worth talking about.

Cage delivers another unbearable performance. I'm not even sure why anyone casts him anymore. He seems like a guy who wants to find interesting things in characters, but can't translate it into anything resembling a competent performance. But all of the performances in this thing are routinely bad. It almost makes me wonder if that's what Alex Proyas was going for, subversion though crappy acting. It really is a cavalcade of things not to do when trying to present a character on screen. They receive no help from the dialog that is clunky and sometime hammers you over the head while not giving you enough information at others. That is the dialog mind you, not the script.

The structure and final outcome of this movie is quite fascinating. It delves into science and religion without ever giving enough information to side with one or the other. Loaded with allegorical imagery and a look at human psychology that would make Jung stand and applaud.

This is not a good movie, not by any stretch. It is a very interesting movie though and not the common commercial fare that it promotes itself to be. Proyos is a very good director and seems to be a relatively smart guy. He is always adding a little something to even the more consumer based movies to give us something to chew on. Knowing has quite a bit to chew on, but unfortunately it is delivered to us in a rather ugly package.

6.5 out of 10