An intelligent first rate surprise! End of the world movie raises the bar

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2009)

I had some certain expectations of Knowing. But they weren't incredibly high. Although star Nicholas Cage has had his fair share of great movies, I was never particularly a fan of his. The action scenes looked solid and the plot seemed like it was decent as well. So I suppose I went with mediocre expectations. So it's never a bad thing when my expectations are exceeded. Knowing turns in a very intelligent sci-fi end of the world story with some truly spectacular scenes and some of the best special effects I've seen this year. On top of that the performances are better than expected and the plot of the film turns out to be smarter than you might expect from this type of movie. The film does go into a unexpected twist that I'm still not sure is a welcome twist but they do make it fit and it does prevent the film from falling into a pattern of predictably that many other "end of the world" spectacles fall into especially with their endings. The entire mystery that unfolds is even more interesting than I expected and it just makes the entire film far more worthwhile than I thought it would be. It went from being mediocre fun movie to actually being a worthwhile memorable film.
My biggest issue with Nicholas Cage is that his ego always seems to win out in his performances. He's one of those "look at me I'm Nicholas Cage pretending to be..." type of actors. So I expected nothing more or less from him in this film and low and behold...the guy puts down his ego for this movie. He actually gives a meaningful, emotional performance as father and scientist John Koestler. This might not be the best Nicholas Cage movie but I think honestly this is one of his best performances. Young newcomer Chandler Canterbury does a great job as Cage's son. He gets some really great scenes and nails the emotion and the character to a T. Rose Byrne is good as concerned mother Diana and pseudo-potential love interest for Cage although he is still reeling from the death of his wife. Byrne doesn't quite reach the potential in her character that Cage does but she does well and has okay chemistry with Cage. In the same vote is young actor Lara Robinson who plays Byrne's daughter. She does well but pales in comparison to the performance of Canterbury.
The real interesting part of this film is the mystery involving the numbers delivered to Cage's son and then to Cage himself. As Cage unravels the mystery of these numbers and where these disasters will occur it really drives the story and keeps you riveted to the entire film. On top of that the three major disasters in the film are mind blowingly portraying and brilliant special effects. The plane crash in particular is brilliant and literally had my jaw dropping. I would watch that scene again and again. I might also mention that director Alex Proyas has really done some brilliant mainstream films including I, Robot, and and Dark City, two brilliant sci-fi action flicks. With his style and flare this movie really impresses. Maybe it overly impressed me because of my mediocre expectations but either way you should definitely check this out because despite what critics had to say this movie will undoubtedly entertain, and surprise. Check it out!! 8.5/10