Review of Knowing (2009) by Rameshwar N — 12 Oct 2012

It is not exactly as bad as it is portrayed to be. Yes there are a lot of things that could have worked goes wrong. Be it acting, unnecessary side plot, simplicity of the discovery or overall execution. But one has to agree that the premise is quite intriguing and exciting and that worked for me.

John (Nicolas Cage) is an astrophysicist and a single parent to an ear-disabled kid Caleb (Chandler Canterbury). In one of the school events, each student gets a letter from a time capsule (letters buried 50 years earlier by students of the same school). While most of them inquires about flying cars and robots, one that Caleb gets just contains random numbers. John gets obsessed with these numbers and accidentally cracks it to find that it contains the list of dates when major accidents or catastrophes happen, number of casualities and the location of where they occur. The last item in the list is soon to happen but the number of causalities and location is incomplete.

Somehow Nicolas Cage gets these stories or they come searching for him of late. He is the only A listed actor in Hollywood who acted in most B movies. If the original plot from the synopsis was developed further and presented independently, it would have worked better as a good B movie. Adding the unnecessary subplot, hallucinations, personalization of the premise wrecks the whole interest in the movie. The climax feels more like a mash-up of other superior movies. The special effects are glitch ridden, acting sub-par thanks to Nicolas Cage of late and dialogues are cringe worthy. Except of the primary premise there is nothing that works for the movie which under utilizes every opportune scenario that could have elevated the thrilling aspect.

Premise that had potential wrecked by both artistic and technical departments.