Hilariously cheesy camp

Rating: 7/10 (29 March 2009)

Whether or not you like this depends on whether or not you like Nicholas Cage. Knowing is basically the purest essence of a Nick Cage film - Cage plays a hard-as-nails atheist astrophysicist single dad, distant from his religious father and improbably brainy son, who finds a long sheet of numbers in a time capsule. Cage picks a random string of 8 from the sheet, and by sheer luck picks the exact numbers that somehow predict the Sept 11 attacks.
Much of the rest of the film consists either of Cage staring at a sheet of paper as a look of wispy stoned horror builds on his face, running blankly as various pieces of transport infrastructure explode around him, or having "tender" moments with his 9-year-old son, who speaks entirely in stilted Professor speak ("I'm afraid that I think that's rather unlikely, Dad"). The film alternates between ridiculously slow (Cage must spend at least two minutes of screen time just sipping liquor) and insanely fast (Try to work out what is going on during the action scenes. Here's a hint - you can't), and builds to severely creepy (but admittedly quite brave) ending of sheer WTF-ery, religious metaphor and implied prepubescent sex. Treat this film as a serious action-mystery and you'll hate it - treat it as a cheesy B-movie and you'll love it.