Knowing Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 03.23.2009

It's more than just half the battle.

Directed by: Alex Proyas
Written by: Ryne Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White and Stuart Hazeldine

Starring:
Nicolas Cage - John Koestler
Chandler Canterbury - Caleb Koestler
Rose Byrne - Diana Wayland
D.G. Maloney - The Stranger
Lara Robinson - Lucinda Embry / Abby Wayland
Ben Mendelsohn - Phil Beckman
Nadia Townsend - Grace Koestler
Alan Hopgood - Rev. Koestler
Adrienne Pickering - Allison
Joshua Long - Younger Caleb
Danielle Carter - Miss Taylor (1959)
Alethea McGrath - Miss Taylor (2009)
David Lennie - Principal Clark (1959)
Tamara Donnellan - Lucinda's Mother
Travis Waite - Lucinda's Father



Running Time: 121 minutes
Rated PG-13 for disaster sequences, disturbing images and brief strong language.

Alex Proyas is a director with a well-earned reputation within the science-fiction genre. The Australian-born filmmaker began his career as a feature film director by making the independent, Australian Film Institute-nominated Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds in 1989. Hollywood took notice of the young director’s talent, and in 1993 Proyas began work on The Crow with actor Brandon Lee. While the film is primarily known by many for being Lee’s last film, it was also well-received by both critics and audiences, grossing over fifty million dollars domestically and ninety-four million worldwide. Proyas would prove that his talents as a filmmaker was not a fluke with Dark City five years later, a sci-fi film noir that won high marks with critics for its visual style and atmosphere-drenched plot. After that movie’s release in 1998, it would six years before American audiences saw him again, during which he made the rock film Garage Days. When he came back, it was within the world of science fiction again, with Will Smith’s I, Robot in 2004. The film’s production was troubled, with representatives from 20th Century Fox interfering in several aspects of the film, and the end result was Proyas swearing never to work with the studio again even though it became his most financially successful film to date with nearly $350 million worldwide and still managing to garner praise for Proyas’s visual style and thriller sensibilities. It’s been another five years since then, but Proyas is now back with Knowing, his latest science fiction effort, starring Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne.

Knowing is the story of John Koestler (Cage), a professor of astrophysics at MIT and a single father of elementary school student Caleb (Canterbury). When Caleb’s school opens up a time capsule put in the ground in 1959, Caleb ends up with the entry of Lucinda Embry (Robinson), a tortured young girl who has written a page full of numbers. Caleb takes the page home to John, who initially believes the numbers to be just a random sequence; however, that night while having a bit too much to drink, John stumbles upon a number sequence that seems very familiar to him. He quickly discovers that the page seem to have accurately predicted the dates, death tolls, and locations of every major disaster in the last 50 years, and contain three sets of numbers not yet covered. His colleague at MIT Phil (Mendelson) is unimpressed and attributes it to John’s finding what he wants to find in a coincidental set of numbers, but John isn’t convinced that is the case. His suspicions are confirmed before long, and Caleb is visited shortly after by a mysterious stranger who seems to be connected. John enlists the help of Lucinda’s daughter Diana (Byrne) and granddaughter Abby (Robinson again in a dual role) to figure out what the last of the numbers mean before time runs out.

Knowing was originally written by novelist Ryne Pearson before getting a rewrite treatment from Stiles White and Juliet Snowden of Boogeyman fame, and then one more from Proyas and Riverworld's Stuart Hazeldine. Despite the multiple writing teams, the script maintains artificial similarities to Pearson’s previously-adapted novel, Simple Simon which became the Bruce Willis thriller Mercury Rising. Both films have a strange code at the center of the plot, as well as a very strong protective adult figure to take care of the boy who is the keeper of the code. Unlike Rising however, Knowing manages to maintain an intellectual level that keeps it floating above that of a simple action film. Assuming one can buy into the concept of the film, the plot unfolds quite ably, taking the prophetic nature of the script and drawing out some genuinely creepy moments along the way. While we’ve all seen the story of a man obsessed with a theory that everyone else thinks is crazy before—we’ve even seen the number motif, in Joel Schumacher’s ridiculously bad The Number 23 with Jim Carrey—Proyas and Hazeldine’s finished script makes the “is he just a crackpot” portion of the story fairly light, instead focusing on the relationship between John and Caleb and the growing tension of the impending catastrophes. While script plot occasionally lapses into the pending-apocalyptic sort of clichéd lines one might expect, with portents of doom and such, but at the same time the film is steeped in a greater meaning that somehow often eludes post-apocalyptic science-fiction in the hands of lesser filmmakers. Movies such as the trite remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still hammered the plot home with the force of an a titanium mallet; similarly, The Happening had all the subtlety of an air raid siren as it blasted us with its message. In Knowing the plot is about destruction but the themes of faith and hope, and the questions over the nature of free will vs. pre-determined fate, are woven somewhat in-between the lines. It’s not subtle to the point that one needs to look for clues—point of fact, it should be obvious to anyone watching—but it also doesn’t force the message down our throats, nor does it preach which makes for a better film than many which have come before.

The acting is, by and large, quite adequate for the film and the genre. Nicolas Cage, sporting a (thankfully) much shorter haircut than he has in recent bombs Bangkok Dangerous and Next, gives a slightly unhinged take with John, who has turned to alcohol in trying to deal with the death of his wife and take care of Caleb. It is because of his alcoholism that he happens to stumble on the code, and from that point forward Cage gives John just enough of an edge of obsession to drive the mounting tension home. Cage approaches the line of overacting at times, as he is wont to do, but under Proyas’s eye he never quite crosses it. Chandler Canterbury, recently seen as one of the “younger” Benjamin Buttons, is fine as young Caleb, while Rose Byrne is a decent partner to Cage—after she’s done being freaked out by the hero’s initial stalking of her, at least. In twin roles as Lucinda and Abbey, Lara Robinson does fine as well, though she does better as creepy and haunted Lucinda in the beginning of the film than she does as Abbey later.

While Proyas has helmed several sci-fi epics before, he’s tended toward a more fantastic level of visual effects. Dark City featured morphing buildings, while CGI robots formed the core of I, Robot. In Knowing Proyas takes a more realistic approach, at least up until the end. The disasters that inevitably occur on Cage’s watch are amazingly done, with a plane crash (heavily promoted already thanks to marketing geniuses) done breathtakingly well and another disaster coming off almost as nicely. The last twenty minutes make way for some more sci-fi-appropriate effects, and in these Proyas’s visual flair comes off as exceptionally as they’ve ever done, brought down only by a brief maudlin sign-language moment between Cage and Canterbury. After that comes the final sequence, brilliantly scored to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which works amazingly well. Meanwhile, the score by Marco Beltrami complements the story quite nicely; not exactly Oscar-worthy work, but quite good nonetheless. The cinematography from Simon Duggan, who made The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor look better than it deserved to and kept Live Free or Die Hard looking exceptional, does a typically excellent job here of making the movie look fantastic. He does a great job of making Melbourne, Australia look like Boston and frames the film in a soft, almost sad look that is strikingly evocative and does an excellent job of foreshadowing.

There are times in the film that Proyas does let things get a little too close to the line of absurdity or over-sentimentality. While Cage and Canterbury are indeed fine, their relationship has a few awkwardly sappy moments. The presence of the odd stranger that is haunting Caleb works sometimes and doesn’t in others, though it is essential to the plot in a way that is entirely understandable by the end. Speaking of the end, it is one that will surely astound for some people and drive others completely out of the film; it is the kind of choice that Proyas should get credit for in terms of sticking to a vision. Even those who don’t like the ending have to appreciate the skill with which it all finishes up. It could have very easily been undone by the way things play out but it isn’t, and in this Proyas proves that he is miles ahead of many of his genre-mates, who would have dropped this ending with a dull and too-heavy thud.

The 411: With his latest film Knowing, Alex Proyas has shown that he still ranks among the best filmmakers working in the science fiction genre. The director takes a script that had been through many other writers, puts his own polish on it with help from Stuart Hazeldine, and creates a great story about the nature of free will versus determinism and how it relates to hope and faith. Nicolas Cage gives a suitably edge performance and while there are times the movie threatens to sag under a maudlin weight, the fantastic disaster scenes keep it progressing with an urgency and the movie doesn’t sink. Like much of Proyas’s work, this is a movie that will age quite well and it furthers the director’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s better directors working today.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]