Clichéd and more clichéd

Rating: 4/10 (25 July 2009)

Knowing is a film that starts out well, and then in the middle when it begins to head downhill, its prior clichés get highlighted and you think: oh no, it's gonna get worse because I can't excuse all its clichés hereon out.
Nicholas Cage plays a physicist whose son goes to an elementary school about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. This means they're about to open a time capsule stored when the school opened, which contains a very weird note written by a little girl containing seemingly random numbers which Cage finds out predict disasters. I'm gonna leave out the rest, because it never amounts to much. Cage's character lost his wife and you know the script will have him wrestling with ideas of determinism versus chaos, given this plot; he's not a character who has lost a loved one -- he's a name on a script with a convenient back story.
But the real problems with this film are rooted in the script. The setup is good, but as it unfolded, some of the acting got weak because of the bad writing, and the situations got too stuffed with special effects because of bad writing. Often bad special effects, too. And in the end, I was left wondering: How did these aliens predict the future? I must have missed the answer somehow, but I know I didn't miss the preposterous-ness that aliens would send a message to a kid, which gets put into a time capsule, but also, because the kid wigs out, gets finished on a door -- she carves in the numbers, and that door is never replaced in the ensuing 50 years, and conveniently found by Nicolas Cage and buffed down to find the a-ha clue, so Cage's kid could be at his rendezvous point for the aliens. But wait: after all this, the kid still gets a choice to go or not -- free will is alive! I was thinking: Why didn't they just take the kid -- Cage would have voted yes and the kid ain't old enough to vote? Or bring a backup if he opted out? And why would alien beings bother with all this nonsense -- how bout helping us with some technology to avoid being burned alive?
And why -- why write it this way? The movie was interesting for its first 3 reels, it didn't need Armageddon and aliens to keep it interesting. And Proyas' style here is really average; he's not a hack, but the movie is edited and shot in a standard Hollywood fashion, right down to that clichéd score. It was annoying -- orchestral bombast during emotional scenes or tense-note when something was supposed to be scary -- the same pulsing da da - da! you hear in every thriller. Sad.
Also, one last note: Cage's actions in the final scene with his son are very screwy. He finds his son and we understand he's concerned for him; but he never asks where the little girl with him is. This is strange and oft putting. And when she appears, he doesn't embrace her. And when he thinks he's gonna get on the spaceship with the kids, he takes his son's hand, but not the little girl Abby's. In fact, he seems like he's ignoring this poor child about to be whisked away from all that she knows.
He seems oblivious to this child, who the script decided, btw, should not be freaked out even though she's about to get on a spaceship without her mother, who is dead, or as the aliens tell her, OK now. These aliens don't win points for helping out humanity or for honesty -- and why couldn't Cage get on the spaceship, anyway? Wait: Script calls for poignant ending. That explains it.