Knowing (2009) Movie Review, Trailer and Poster

USA, UK, Australia 2009
Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Lara Robinson, Chandler Canterbury, Alethea McGrath, Adrienne Pickering, Ben Mendelsohn
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: 20 March 2009
Running Time: 2 hours 1 minute

The Movie Review

Disaster movies have always been my personal interest. There is something exciting in seeing how filmmakers try to portray how the end of the world would be. So I approached Knowing with fairly high expectation. Especially with Nicolas Cage that has set his foot back in the right track of filmography (forget about Ghost Rider or National Treasure). Okay now, buying and entering the cinema with high expectation is actually something that usually do not very incline to. When the result is good, then it's good, but if the opposite that happens, it will disappoint me greatly. And after about two-third of the running length of Knowing, I wish I had read a review myself before seeing this mixed mixed confused disaster (flick)!


KNOWING
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

Knowing is your ordinary disaster film at the core of it, but with great performances from Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne enhanced with great pace of terror. It starts in year 1959 when the elementary kids from William Dawes Elementary School in Massachusetts, bury a time capsule filled with drawings of the kids' imagination of how the future would become. But one creepy disturbed girl, Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson) instead of making drawing, she writes an exhaustive list of seemingly random numbers with the speed of a possessed person. Her teacher Miss Taylor stops her before she could finish it. This time capsule is planned to be opened in 50 years to come.

50 years it is, now populated with all brand new kids and teachers including Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) the son of a professor in MIT, John Koestler (Nicolas Cage). It's a historical day at William Dawes because the time capsule is about to be revealed to all the audience attending the ceremony, and each paper will be lend to each currently studying pupil. When all the kids are excited to get all funny stuff of drawing like rocket and stuff, Caleb is confused with all the numbers on the paper that he receives. John notices this paper and quite amazed by the numbers it contains. He starts analyzing it and finally finds (to his utmost shock and fear) that the numbers are showing the exact dates of all huge disasters happening throughout these 50 years and those numbers even include the amount of death toll of each disaster! What is even more shocking to John, that there are still 3 disasters left that will happen in the future. What will John do about it? How could a girl predict all these catastrophic events with exact accuracy? And where is she now?

Love and Hate collide. Hah? What's that now? Love and Hate? Indeedio! You will just love how the mystery being unraveled and you will just love how the tense never ceases to shock you. Especially if you watch it in a cinema with good sound system with all the trembling sound of terror and fear shock your very own seat and could feel the tremble in your back. But then you will just hate how the writer try to solve the mystery and you will just hate with the final conclusion of the story.

When the terror elements present they are satisfying, especially the revelations of the first and second disasters, something that'll catch your full attention on what happen on screen with all the burning stuff and all. And the final dispute caused by extreme panicking between Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne) and John Koestler than lead to car pursuit. And not to forget the eerie image of something that John eventually discovers in Lucinda's death bed, whew...Creepy! That is also a scene you could not shake off easily after leaving the movie theater. The pace is simply never on my complain list. But when things shift into jumbled-confused-obtuse explanation of how and why and who (the heck are those matrix-like people has gotta do with the story), then the movie becomes a disaster of itself. Although, the CGI is astounding.

I'm not saying that I dislike a movie which crosses genre and try to bring the best from each world, which in this case Thriller and Sci-Fi. But what a wise decision to stick to just one genre if the writer doesn't know how to end it properly and most importantly could not blend them well. Let me put it this way, I'm drooling over strawberry cheesecake or Japanese teriyaki, but to eat them at a single moment, blahhh, duh! No thanks.

-- Start of Spoiler Possibility Alert --
Knowing may seem like other disaster movies with people helplessly not knowing what to do. But the movie tries to be smart and ends up becoming the exact opposite of smart. The ending and the solution are at the same stupidity level as War of the Worlds (2005). Hey guess what saves the day! I hope it's mighty-mouse, no, it's freakin' UFO, with 2 forms of alien. When in contact with people they dress like the Matrix (Okay the Matrix's clothing is something that's already ordinary actually), but when they finally transform into their real form, they look like the black angels in Max Payne. I had this bad feeling about this ending scene, when I looked at my watch and knew this movie was going to end very soon, I was worried the filmmakers will end it with desperate solution.
-- End of Spoiler Possibility Alert --

Knowing is very much feel like 2 movies crammed (and I mean corset-tight crammed) into one disaster movie. When the scenes starts to enter the ridiculous phase, I practically sat back at my seat and finish the popcorn (Thank GOD, I bought the popcorn) and I could even hear one of the audience scoffing and giggling at it. It seems the movie disappointed her more than it disappointed me.

Easily concluded, the first part of the movie is highly recommended and very entertaining. But then it blows, hard. What bothers me is that once we see how good the first part is, you couldn't just help but to wanna know how the movie ends, but after "knowing" it, you just wish it would not be that silly.

© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com