Nicolas Cage has had quite a strange run of movies lately (Bangkok Dangerous, Next, Ghost Rider, The Wicker Man,…).  I would not be surprised to hear he just threw a dart at a bunch of scripts and whatever it hit, BAM, that’s his next project.  Well, this time that dart landed on a science-fiction movie from Director Alex Proyas, who has had success directing this genre with The Crow, Dark City, and I, Robot.
This story is about a page full of numbers that describes some of the world’s most tragic disasters and predicts a few more that are about to happen.   Nicolas Cage plays a down on his luck, struggling, single father (shocking, I know) who happens upon this sequence of numbers and tries to stop what seems like the inevitable.

Title: Knowing

The Good:

Compared to other recent science-fiction movies, I found this plot to be a lot more captivating.  It isn’t ever going to be confused for a true story, but if you give it a chance, there is not many times you will be rolling your eyes at preposterous happenings.  Also, most of the special effects for this low-budget movie were above-average.     They seemed very realistic to how situations of tragedy might go.

The Bad:

However, there was one scene where the special effects let me down.  (SPOILER ALERT!)  After a plane crash near a highway that Nic Cage’s character was stranded on, he tried to go rescue some of the passengers.  When he got to the middle of the plane, he literally reached directly into a big flame and tried to pull people out.  I am no fire expert, but it seems that if you reach into a flame, you might get burned, or at least act as if it is really hot at that moment.  Not the case with Mr. Cage.
This scene underlines the real problem with this movie, the acting.  The acting of Cage and his son, played by Chandler Canterbury (Benjamin Button), was terrible.  When you feel like you might get lost in the movie’s story, the butchering of lines takes you away from ever fully being entrapped.

Closing:

I went into this movie dreading what I was about to watch.  Thinking that I was about to waste two hours of my time on yet another “Nicolas Cage needs to cash a check” movie, but I was pleasantly surprised with the movie as a whole.  The main concept of the movie is one that everyone thinks about at some point. Do things happen for a reason?  This movie takes a stand on that issue but does not just wrap everything up into a pretty little bow and send you on your way.  It creates real fear at time and has moments of edge of the seat suspense.  I don’t believe it is worth a full admission price, but if found at a cheap theater in a few weeks after release, “Knowing” is worth seeing.

Runtime: 1 hr 55min without trailers
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne
Genre: Sci-Fi, Suspense
Rated: PG-13
Final Verdict: See it, but wait for the cheap theatre

If you agree or disagree with my review, please feel free to leave comments. Special thanks to sportman32.