Weak sci-fi melded with pseudo-religious bunkum, signifying nothing...

Rating: 5/10 (1 November 2009)

...more than Hollywood's ability to part poorly-educated American adolescents (and adolescent minds) from their parents' money. I knew "Knowing" was going to disappoint as soon as I saw three names credited for the screenplay. Checking here confirmed that initial misgiving; these are the folks who helped inflict a wretched "Boogeyman" upon the world. Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to what they're going to do with the upcoming remake of "The Birds." Still, I had some hopes that director Alex "The Crow" Proyas, who'd also helmed the deliciously bizarre "Dark City," might come through again. Alas, this was not to be, despite what I'm assuming were his best efforts, given that he helped produce the thing as well. As is almost always the case, the main fault lies in the script, which, though compelling on the surface, is utterly flawed.
I'll try to be succinct. "Knowing" basically posits an alien race with god-like powers, including incredibly detailed (and accurate) prognostication and faster-than-light space flight. These aliens have determined some fifty years in the past of the film's current events that the Sun will suffer a coronal mass ejection which will cleanse the Earth of all life. They choose to notify a select group of humans of this terrible fate in order to (presumably) lead these lucky people to various sites around the planet, from which the aliens will take them onto their ships and transport them to a new and far distant world where these survivors can "start over." Isn't that special? One such pair of survivors is notified via a coded message planted in a time capsule, and received by the son of a crack astrophysicist M.I.T. professor (Nicolas "I'll take that paycheck, thank you" Cage). The clever, drunken prof manages to eventually crack the code and get the message (in bits and pieces) via a very nearly preposterous series of coincidences and a serious dollop of serendipity, including being witness to a spectacular airplane crash. One bit of silly business after another finally leads him and the two children to the proper lift-off point, and everything is resolved neatly, sort of.
Now, without going into further detail about the silliness involved in all this, I pose the simple question: why doesn't this incredibly advanced extraterrestrial civilization simply use its obviously incredible technology/magical powers to build a proper shield to protect the "doomed" planet and its miserable inhabitants? How hard can that be for a race so amazingly advanced that it can see into the future? Are they just picky about who gets to live? Do they think there are just a handful of humans that are worthy of salvation? Is it all really just "God" working His mysterious ways? It boggles the mind nearly as much as the stupidity of films like "Independence Day" and others of that ilk.
That said, "Knowing" does feature superb production values: great special effects, some startlingly effective visuals, decent if unremarkable acting, good sound, and capable direction. It's the story that falls flat on its face. There's a garbled attempt to pin some epistemological and/or ontological explanation for this skullduggery via a confused metaphysical argument, but none of it makes a lick of sense when considered for more than a second or two.
Other posters here have detailed some of the more egregious flaws in the script (cf. a time capsule stored under a manhole cover that any determined jackass could and would remove at a moment's notice with very little effort), so I'll leave Constant Reader to discover them on their own. Suffice to say, this is just more mindless eye candy for the indifferent masses, and only barely worth watching. Apocalypse geeks will get off on the destructive imagery, Nicolas Cage detractors will have a field day with his hair, teeth, and phone call acting, and no one will give a fig for the poor thing within twenty minutes of having watched it.
Time-wasting viewing only. I give it the rating I do strictly for the visuals, and its narrow escape from utter mediocrity by the narrowest of margins. Best rented for free, and certainly not worth purchasing unless you're (perhaps) a Rose "28 Weeks Later" Byrne groupie. You've been warned.
Nicolas Cage really, really, really needs a better agent, not to mention a slap upside the head with a wet fish.