Knowing
2009
*½
Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury, Lara Robinson, Nadia Townsend, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Hopgood, Adrienne Pickering
Following his wife's tragic death, an astrophysics professor/single dad has succumbed to fate. It all changes when his son brings home a cryptic letter, which was placed in a time capsule 50 years ago. With the help of bourbon, he deciphers the seemingly random numbers on the paper to be the dates and casualties of past and future disasters. The message here is that every individual catastrophe is predetermined and all that mankind can do is post the death toll on the Internet. There is something intriguing about the overall concept, but this deterministic approach is ludicrous and depressing. From early on, you can hear the plot machinery creak as it lays out the breadcrumbs, which come together in the end. By then, the film's increasingly silly twists and its moronic protagonist had driven me insane. The backbone of the story about a widower who has lost his faith in the face of extraordinary circumstances is lifted straight from Signs, and the rest is assembled from other works by M. Night Shyamalan. Nicolas Cage, in his typical shouty mode, gives one of his worst performances.
