Could have been so much better ...

Rating: 4/10 (21 March 2009)

I had very high hopes for this film, after viewing the several trailers that were produced, but once again I walked away quite disappointed in this "Signs" meets "Close Encounters" meets "The Number 23 " meets "National Treasure" hybrid mixed in with a generous helping of Prozac.
But when the premise of a film is the possible end of the world, there are few laughs and very little wiggle room with the conclusion, and that is the main problem here.
Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage plays John Koestler, a professor at MIT who has previously lost his wife - and his faith. Now his class lectures are filled with boozy instructions on the randomness of existence. To John, there is no order, no natural laws, no God and no reason for anything.
He also drinks - a lot.
His 9-year-old son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) has inherited his father's disposition (but not his alcohol problem - yet), although to be fair, the tragic loss of a mother would do that sort of thing.
The film opens in 1959 as a local elementary school is burying a time capsule to be unearthed in 2009. The children in Miss Taylor's class eagerly render drawings of what the world would look like 50 years from their time. All the kids created robots, spaceships, jet packs and other quaint examples of science fiction from the era.
All except the creepy Lucinda (Laura Robinson), who appears totally spaced-out (like Dakota Fanning in "Hide and Seek") and, to prove it, writes a series of numbers instead of a drawing.
Fifty years later, Caleb is now a student at the school. When the time capsule is brought up, the present-day students are all given a cartoon created by the original class. Of course, Caleb gets the list of numerals.
He then begins having nightmares and hears whispering voices. This makes him even more depressing than he already is. Meanwhile, John notices something about the pageful of random numbers. Soon, like Cage's character in "National Treasure," he is able to decipher that they are lists of the world's major disasters over the past five decades (although it includes the fire that supposedly killed John's wife, along with 47 others; this hardly qualifies as a "major" disaster compared to tragedies which wiped out hundreds or thousands of people).
John tries to tell a colleague about the list, but naturally the guy pooh-poohs him. But, after an airplane crash right over his head, John is convinced that something is amiss. Reading the numbers, he comes to the conclusion that there will be a terrible accident in New York City and - viola! - there is.
Now there is something even more threatening on the horizon, so John hooks up with Lucinda's daughter, Diana Wayland (Rose Byrd, "The Dead Girl," "28 Weeks Later") and her laconic daughter, Abby (who happens to the same actress that played Lucinda - a cheap, unnecessary device).
After this, a series of plot complications come together so fast that few people can keep up without a scorecard. Caleb and Abby team up to become the world's youngest and most lethargic tag team; scientists discover that another sun may collide with our Sun; there are a group of German post-modern models following the kids all around; Rose takes the children from John and tries to hide them is a cave; her car is stolen; and John tries to patch up things with his pop, a minister of some kind.
When these plot lines come together, however, there are things flying around and severe eye damage and head trauma may occur. Needless to say, the conclusion of this movie is one of the cheesiest and goofiest I have ever witnessed. What the director, Alex Proyas ("I, Robot"), calls "hope," I call "schlock."
It was a film that could have been so much better. The idea is very intriguing. The concept of a person from the past conjuring up numbers that are links to disasters and events taking place in the future and effecting an individual should have made a better movie.
One of the main problems is the pacing, which has been slowed down from 45 to 33 1/3 RPMs. No one is happy and John's character drags everyone down with him. Yes, I know his wife died (presumably about five years before), but all he can do is drink and occasionally cook hot dogs for his equally sad-sack of a kid.
While Cage phones this one in, the acting of the two children is just plain atrocious. I know they are young, but there is precedents of child actors doing a fine job - but not these two. Rose Byrne's performance is nothing to write home about, either.
Several subplots then go nowhere, making us wonder why they were even brought up in the first place. The most glaring of these is when John calls Caleb's school to find out (for SOME reason) who the two custodians were who dug up the capsule. The voice on the other end of the phone explains that this is "classified information" (what?!) and the subject is never brought up again.
There are some decent qualities about "Knowing," just to be fair. The plot is interesting - before it flops all over the place; the CGI work is decent; and the jet crash is one of the most realistic and horrific ever put on the screen. It actually gave me chills because I've been in several rough flying situations.
Overall, however, without one gleam of light or hope and no one really to root for or relate to in this picture, it's an exercise in gloom best left for viewing in one's own home, after a really disastrous day or to cheer someone up after a funeral or two.