Knowing (it sucks) and warning you to avoid

Rating: 1/10 (10 April 2010)

***This review contains spoilers *** Oh dear, where to start? Okay, for a movie obsessed with numbers, here's three you need to know: 1.12 - or rather 1hr 12 mins - the time at which this promising movie goes off the rails with an annoying twist straight out of The Forgotten and countless other poor sci-fi flicks. For a man who works at MIT, it's obvious our moping hero doesn't recognise a plot device that was used in Close Encounters back in the late seventies. Hmm, a series of random numbers. Ooh, they're all dates when disasters happen and the number of casualties. Ooh, but what are these unaccounted for numbers? Could they be co-ordinates? How about yes Nicolas Cage? Yes, they are and yes i saw the same plot device used when i was 10 years old in Close Encounters. Knowing isn't a bad film for that first 72 minutes. The plot unfolds nicely and the premise is good. Cage is okay, not great and it ticks over nicely. But as that shark looks into view at the 72min mark i found myself getting angry as the inevitable twist loomed its large, ugly head - then the movie jumped said shark. And from that point on it just got worse. Remember that annoyed feeling you may have felt at the end of Contact when Jodie Foster lands on an alien planet and it looks like something from a holiday advert (aka a complete sell out?) That's mild compared to the hideous mess of a resolution at the end of Knowing. And that last half hour of AI, with the rubbish aliens? Also as bad here, complete with a spaceship that still looks like CGI artwork pitched to the producers, complete with stupid floaty contraptions that are utterly pointless (even a fantasy film has to have some logic). As for the protracted ending in which Cage emotes to his son for what seems like days, well that's 10 minutes of my life i'll never get back. I've seen some bad films in my time but Knowing ranks up there with Rancid Aluminium as one of the worst. Three words: avoid, avoid, avoid.