Intriguing but undelivering sci-fi prophecy film

Rating: 4/10 (15 April 2009)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Teacher
Joe Koestler (Nicolas Cage) is burnt out over his wife's death a few years earlier, and gets by trying to raise his young son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) who's interested in science. When a time capsule buried fifty years earlier is dug up at the boy's school, he chooses a piece of paper with a load of numbers on it as his memento- but this piece of paper holds the key to a series of disasters that have occurred since the time it was buried and, to Joe's horror, a series that are about to happen that he is powerless to stop...and the last one's looking set to be the end of the world.
Shoot me, I've gone and watched another Nicolas Cage film. His recent output of relentless mediocrity and outright crap should have made me avoid his name like the plague, and Knowing didn't look particularly interesting to watch. Selective director Alex Proyas has chosen this as his latest script, and his old style now seems completely out the window, and the style of his last film, 2004's I, Robot is back in this intriguing but undelivering end of the world thriller.
It's clever and a bit unsettling how the sums in the film really do add up to real life disasters in the last few years and how they're worked into the context of the film (if a little inconsiderate to the families of the victims?). What's less impressive is how utterly flat and and unremarkable the end result is. There is no genuine air of tension and suspense in the film, and the ending doesn't feel like it's resolved anything in relation to the rest of the film. Cage simply goes through the motions in the lead role (like we could have expected anything else?) and the supporting cast are stuck in the same boat. Some brilliant special effects sadly can't cover up all the other problems present. It's not awful, and is perfectly watchable in it's own way, but a more dynamic and comprehensible script and a director and lead actor with more verve could have produced much better results. **