• What’s Good: Nick Cage, when used right, hits the spot. The last act is so crazy you’ll call it genius or you’ll call it stupid. Me: the former.
  • What’s Not: Director Alex Proyas always gets shot down for taking chances. He’s doomed and might as well play it safe–maybe then critics will respect the guy.

Nick Cage doesn’t act, he ACTS. Every move, every gesture, every emotion is enunciated to a level of fourth wall breaking distraction. Usually this is just annoying and when it’s not that it’s funny to a point of delirium (see Nick punching women in bear suits from “Wicker Man,” see also face melting scene in “Ghost Rider,” see also the entirety of “Bangkock Dangerous”) but his hyperbollocks (my word) style fits right in with Alex Proya’s latest. Having made the classic “Dark City” and underrated Hollywood “I Robot” the director always finds a way to work in some notion, indirect as it may be, relating to the end of the world. He’s done it figuratively (the “city” in “Dark City” crumbles), indirectly through artistic implication (the fantastically subtle final shot of “I, Robot” where robo-Jesus leads his flock to the promise land) and, now, literally but through the guise of a common supernatural thriller. I would call “Knowing” sci-fi fantasy posing as a thriller or, more to the point, a lively mash-up of “Final Destination’s” mechanics and “Donnie Darko’s” grandiose gestures. While the film also looks like a lower rent version of the already low rent “The Number 23,” the gradual genre contortions allow this film to come off as a genuine surprise. You may hate it, but you WILL be surprised by what you see!

As the film establishes the premise that a page of numbers from the past has a way of haunting our present, tension builds in ways that are not cinematically mind blowing; things creek in the dark, strange figures appear out of the fog and random numbers coalesce into full fledged prophecies. “Knowing” may read like a (by the) numbers thriller about a string of fatalistic disasters leading up to the ultimate whopper, but I give the story (written by someone whose only previous credit is “Mercury Rising”!) a lot of credit for taking a simple/derivative idea and following it –perhaps even stretching it– to a singularity point of absolute endness. Far too many Hollywood films cut short their narrative trajectories and, thus, are usually remembered for their concept more than the paid off. I would use M Night’s “The Happening” as a prime example of chicken shit Hollywood filmmaking; of taking an idea full great promise and imagination, the end of days, and pulling back on it just before it’s allowed to get interesting or say something new. As with 2007′s “Sunshine,” Here is a film that does both and, in the process, goes down in a blaze of glory. Literally, “blaze” and “glory” are the two most symbolic features of Proyas’ visionary (yeah, I said it!) final denouement where notions of science and divine destiny collide to create the biggest WTF moment I’ve seen in years. I wish I could spoil it but that would  rob the film of so much of its power.

As with Cage, the film supersizes everything. Things don’t happen, they HAPPEN. But, taken as a lofty and searchingly ambitious B-movie, I feel “Knowing” is a truly special film. Something easy to overlook due to all the hamminess and loose ends (deconstructing the film will make you go mad), but something that refuses to compromise. Plus, where else are you going to find a film where Nick Cage out acts fate. Nowhere. NOWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love this film.
Grade: B+