I'm knowing some people will like this... (Knowing (DVD))

Member Name: jamiebeck

Product:	Knowing (DVD)
Date:	05/07/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: interesting story

Disadvantages: weak acting

Knowing is the latest Nicolas Cage film which is about to come out on DVD. This film is best described as a disaster film with a touch of suspense and spookiness.

After seeing the trailer I initially thought "OMG! finally a decent Nic Cage film"; it has been sooo long since the days of Con Air and Face Off (don't laugh - they were pretty simple action films but very good ones at that!) and ever since, Cage has been involved with some terrible films; Ghostrider being the prime example! Anyway, Knowing in some ways has a lot of good things going for it on one hand, on the other; I wasn't too impressed by Cage and the film.

---The Story---

The storyline starts in 1959 with a young girl called Lucinda who is part of a classroom that has been chosen to submit drawings to go into a time capsule to be opened in present day 2009. Lucinda doesn't draw a picture, she writes a whole page front and back of numbers, random it seems yet it still ends up in the capsule. 50 years later and Nicolas Cage's son is the recipient of the sheet of paper after his class reopens the time capsule as planned. The story really starts when Nicolas Cage's character College Professor, John Koestler gets hold of this sequence of numbers and miraclously discovers the numbers to be references to disasterous events that, in 1959, hadn't happened yet; Kobe earthquake, Lockerbie, 9/11... Conveniently this is discovered a day or two before another disaster is, according to the paper, about to occur. It is now up to John to prevent these disasters from happening and get to the bottom of this strange phenomenon.

---What I didn't like---

What i didn't like was the loose link between the numbers being random numbers on a seemingly deranged school girl's paper to suddenly being discovered by Cage's character as being dates. I won't go into details to prevent a spoiler from occuring but I found the bridge of this very weak. I understand it was necessary to somehow make this observation for the storyline to start unfolding but I'm sure a more imaginative writer could have come up with a stronger case. In defence of this however, is that this film doesn't ignore the fact that if this did happen the 'discoverer' would be treated as crazy or disturbed; John is for a good part of the film. Also this film's main theme is that of progression of human life - are we a coincidence / genetic mutation? Or has someone somewhere planned this exact route? A very interesting question but one that deserves an indepth and subjective answer, unfortunately 2 hours isn't quite enough time to go into the depths of the universe and answer the question of the meaning of life (Although Monty Python did have a good stab at it! ;) )

One last snag for me was Cage himself, this wasn't too difficult a performance, one that didn't require a De Niro or Pacino but in quite a few parts I found his performace pretty cheesey and unimaginative. Many critics have always believed he is a pretty terrible actor, whereas I've always found him interesting, there's always the popular opinion of Cage being a prime example of nepotism with his powerful family links to Francis Ford Coppola - one of the most respected people in Hollywood. That aside, I wasn't too impressed with Cage, I find him wooden and repetitive and his performances of the last few years have done little to me to dispell that opinion unfortunately.

---What I did like---

That said, this was a pretty imaginative film, plot and script. I liked the angle it took in answering some pretty deep questions and certainly sewed a few seeds of imagination into some people's minds. This was also similar to an M Night Shyamalan film so people who enjoyed such films as 'Signs', 'The Happening' and 'The Village' will, i think, really enjoy this film.

I liked how the film managed to entwine action with consipiracy with a bit of haunting wth mysterious men lurking near Cage's home and other initially unexplained events. This film raised a few questions that sometimes took a while to explain but i dont think anyone would be left disappointed with a lack of explanation given the questions raised.

All in all, I liked this film; it was an average film which was a little different to others which is refreshing to see. Like I said, I recommend this for lovers of conspiracies, unexplained events or simply people who enjoy action films.

Summary: John unravels a 50 year old mystery that reveals disasters that havent happened yet