Nic Cage's best film

Rating: 9/10 (10 December 2011)

I love KNOWING. I loved everything about it from the moment it began to the time it finished. I loved it enough to watch it again a week later, to see whether I'd been overenthusiastic in my praise, and I discovered it was just as good – if not better – a second time around. Director Alex Proyas delivers a tour-de-force disaster movie that takes Hollywood convention and tears it up until little pieces until nothing is left.
It starts out deceptively simple, slow and understated, the kind of slightly-odd mystery yarn that THE X-FILES used to do so well in its heyday. Then it hits you with a pivotal scene involving a plane which is one of the most breathtaking I've ever seen up on screen. Truly a phenomenal moment, the kind of scene that I had go to and watch on Youtube a couple of times because it was so great. The tracking shot in ATONEMENT was superb, and this equals it. From that point in, I was hooked, and the film kept me hooked until the ending.
Said ending has proved a little hard to swallow for some viewers, but I was more than happy with the outcome: it plays a difficult hand and avoids ever becoming twee, so kudos to Proyas for not inserting some sub Spielbergian nonsense. Nicolas Cage can do this kind of haunted, jittery character in his sleep by now, but even so he gives a strong performance, the kind that leads me to forgive him for some of the tosh he's appeared in during his career (not least THE WICKER MAN). The SFX work is, it has to be said, outstanding, perfectly complementing the storyline for once, leading me declare this one of the top films of 2009 and in such hallowed company as DISTRICT 9 and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.