Knowing Review
By David Kempler
Cage Unknowingly Succeeds
Nicolas Cage is someone I've always a considered a de-evolutionary actor. By that I mean that I enjoyed his earlier film work far more than his more recent acting gigs. To me, it all started to fall apart after "Leaving Las Vegas", without question the pinnacle role of his career. Right after that he became a tough guy action-hero type, The bottom totally fell out in his very unmemorable role opposite Travolta in "Face Off". Ever since then he has become a caricature who always appears to be
acting.
It was against this very low set of expectations that I saw his latest star-turn as the lead in "Knowing". Director Alex Proyas pulls off a minor miracle by reigning Cage in, at least somewhat, so that we are spared Cage's usually limited repertoire of emotions. It's not that Cage is great here, it's that his character is immersed in a very original story that is presented professionally, at times achieving outstanding suspense and edge-of-the-seat moments.
The story opens with a 50-year flashback to a local grade school burying a time capsule that has been filled with the young students' drawings of what the world will look like in 50 years. Most of the children cheerily draw spaceships and rockets. One spooky and spooked little girl writes a string of seemingly unrelated numbers that fill up pages. When the teacher collects her paper she is mildly disturbed by it but it's not important enough to make a fuss over. There is an ominous feel to the scene that tips us off that the numbers clearly are trying to tell us something.
To the present we go and it is time to dig up the capsule. Naturally, the focal point becomes the sheets of numbers. John Koestler (Cage) is an astrophysics professor at MIT and it is his son who ends up with the mysterious writings from 50 years earlier. He is fascinated by the writing and soon discovers that they are codes that predict the future and so far they have been dead accurate. It is the professor's job to try and intervene with possible future tragedies.
"Knowing" borrows from a lot of films and genres, yet manages to feel original most of the time. Proyas does a nice job of balancing action, suspense, mystery and the supernatural. The result is extremely entertaining. There are times when the tension is absolutely first-class. The ending is weaker than the rest of the film but luckily there are some nice special effects that prevent it from falling into a black hole. It is also at the end that we are forced to watch Cage emote and it feels so terribly out of place with the near perfect pace and momentum that Proyas provided up until that point. When all is said and done, this is Cage's best film in quite some time, not because he has raised his game but because his director has a near stranglehold on him and because the story is strong enough to carry the day. It's nice knowing that Cage's action fans will not be disappointed in the least, while the rest of us can still enjoy "Knowing".
