(Crown) Close Encounters of the T**d Kind? (Knowing (DVD))

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Knowing (DVD)
Date:	12/10/09 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good fun hokum

Disadvantages: Silly ending

Nick Cage, the star of this enjoyable Sci-Fi, is facing a huge $6.2 million demand for non payment of taxes, Con Air time if he doesn't pay by November 30th, 'Knowing', the type of hokum he's been making a lot of lately to clearly try and pay off the IRS (Inland Revenue Service) as quick as possible. How on earth Francis Ford Coppolas nephew got in this pickle is beyond me. To me he's had hit after hit after hit, more money than a medium size bank in Lichtenstein!

The tag-line for this somewhat silly Armageddon romp is 'People see what they want to see', which should be taking in context to what audiences really enjoy at multiplexes rather than an exploration of the extremely ambiguous narrative on show. The broadsheet hacks were all too keen to pile into it because of the preposterous finale and mid-way genre flip, Knowing, an ambitious magpie of an idea steeling from a mix of movies, books and advanced probability math. There's everything from Jodie Fosters excellent 'Contact' to Denis Quaids 'Frequency' woven in here, and many more, the Steven Spielberg ending, resulting in one of those snobby movie hacks calling it "Close Encounters of the T**d Kind". I personally think that is way off and unfair (and will also be pinching that headline for the new version of the Day the Earth Stood Still I'm reviewing next week) because for all its faults Knowing isn't half bad and a cool apocalyptic fun movie for a long weekend, what ever the killjoys say. I'm mean come on guys it is a Nick Cage movie!

-The Cast-

Nicolas Cage ... John Koestler
Chandler Canterbury ... Caleb Koestler
Rose Byrne ... Diana
Lara Robinson ... Lucinda
Ben Mendelsohn ... Phil Beckman
D.G. Maloney ... The Stranger
Nadia Townsend ... Grace
Alan Hopgood ... Reverend Koestler
Adrienne Pickering ... Allison
Joshua Long ... Younger Caleb

-The Plot-

In 1959 the pupils of William Dawes Elementary School buried a time capsule with their drawings of what they think things will look like and what sort of inventions will change the world by 2009. Lucinda (Lara Robinson) hasn't drawn a picture but a series of numbers in a trance like state, from the top corner to the bottom, but her offering stuffed into the capsule with the rest. She hears constant whispers in her head and very disconnected from her school friends.

50 years on and we meet Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), a pupil at the same school and present when the canister is opened. He is the son of the prominent MIT Professor, John Koestler (Nick Cage), each pupil getting to open one envelope each, Caleb, of course, getting Lucinda's series of numbers, alas soon cursed with those mysterious whispers in his ears as the apparent curse is passed on.

Dad is a bachelor, his wife and Caleb's mom dying in an apartment block fire some two years back, a bottle of whisky his particular night nurse after he's put his boy to bed. Caleb, although told not to, has bought the page of numbers home and left them on the kitchen table, catching dad's eye, him being a maths and science lecturer after all. It soon becomes clear they are not random numbers but a sequence of dates, a quick Google revealing they list past newsworthy disasters around the world.

Amazed by this he rings his fellow teacher Phillip (Ben Mendelsohn), he thinking John has had one too many and suffering from a bout of 'Apophenia' (the perceptual phenomenon of people looking for patterns in randomness in number strings), skeptical to say the least of his claims because some numbers listed are not included in the calculation and so could still be seemingly random. But it's undeniable there is a pattern there and the big test will be the three remaining dates that haven't occurred yet. Could they too now predict coming disasters?

Koestler, a man of science who teaches his students that everything is random and so cant be predicted, is suffering from the 'Cassandra Complex', a predicament of being able to see future disasters while fearing no-one will believe him (named from Greek myth). Also hearing noises is Allison (Adrienne Pickering), the professor tracking down Lucinda's daughter Diana (Rose Byrne) to try and make sense of it all, Allison her daughter. But when he discovers what the other numbers mean and witnesses the first disaster he realizes this is far bigger and scarier than he ever thought and his son Calum and little Allison are some how connected, haunting and strange apparitions pulling the kids away from their increasingly worried parents, the final date on the list being October 19th, next week, Judgment Day.

Diana: What happens when the numbers run out?

-The Conclusion-

The temptation to knock off a dooyoo star for the preposterous ending is huge (as it is for Nick Cage to axe some zeros off that tax bill), but if you listen to the audio commentary you see the directors real point and it all make sense, be it in a rather gobbledegook way. And there, of course, lies the flaw in some glorious Hollywood Hokum here, the writers scribbling their selves into a cul-de sac they could never plausibly escape.

I like the inclusions of Determinism and Randomness theory in the central plot that almost makes this film scarily realistic. Determinism believes nothing is done by accident and everything has a reason, perhaps why the Earth is the exact distance from the sun and moon so to give life here. Randomness, on the other hand, predicts anything is possible if the universe is infinite and so no reason for our being other than chance.

Cast wise no one wears angst and dreamy sex appeal (and an assortment of jackets) quite like Cage and, as ever, always watchable on the big screen, the excellent special effects on a surprisingly small budget also sucking you into the mystery that does captivate. There's no patronising and less than subtle plot hints or spelt out dialogue to camera to make you feel stupid and you are left to make up your own mind what's going on. The film is mostly shot in Australia for those cost (and Cages tax) reasons and there's a fabulous plane crash in it, the one most of you have seen in the trailer, one that's extremely relevant to the plot.

The film builds really well with plenty of post 911 paranoia and man made global warming foreboding, the spooky soundtrack edging up the tension as a harmless puzzle leads to far more serious consequences. The film is packed full of clues you easily miss first time around and although you don't realize it, everything that happens is connected, perhaps the films biggest flaw that the director doesn't get that to come across better to give it more credibility, hence the nutty ending. But enough intrigue early on to get you hooked for the first hour neatly glosses over that. If you can put aside that climax and go along with this then you too will give it the fourth star. Other Cage fans may just shout 'Next'! Another one of his recent and very silly Sci-Fi efforts...

= = = = Special Features = = = =

-Audio Commentary-

Director Alex Proyas talks about his movie, a chance to finally explain his muddled movie.

-Knowing All: The Making Of-

Straightforward behind the scenes stuff.

-Visions of the Apocalypse-

Special effects stuff from the crazy Aussies


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Imdb.com scores it 6.5 out of 10.0 (43,456 votes)
Any 2 films for 2 nights for £5:00
RuN-TiMe 121 minutes
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Summary: Cage being Cage