Knowing (2009)

Film of 2012 #66


Starring Nicholas Cage this film has received some hate based upon the ridiculous premise of a sheet of paper left in a time capsule for 50 years. Nicholas Cage finds it and figures out what the numbers are. I went in with pretty low expectations and they were not met at all by this nonsense. You have Nicholas Cage as a single father of a son who is deaf. He is a University lecturer who at the start has some different thoughts that he puts to his students but I think he is predisposed to believe these numbers.


His wife died and he is struggling to cope with this, it shows him drinking a lot and it is actually one night when he is drunk that he looks at the numbers and it just happens to be the September 11th date and the number of deaths. The premise itself is fine for me I understand to look at this sort of film it is really the execution that causes me a problem. He happens to be at the point when a plane crashes and the effects are really quite spectacular and good. But he happens to be a the right spot at the right time for the disaster, would have made more sense if his son had directed him there or if he had realised the other numbers were locations.


Overall this is a disappointment, an interesting idea done badly, I think they could have made more of the ending and for such a big story they focused incorrectly on the smaller story with the big ending and it just did not work for me. This is a 1 star film that you should avoid, the plane crash is actually really good CGI but is not actually worth sitting through the whole film for.