Movie review: 'Knowing'

Nicolas Cage (Credit: Vince Valitutti/Summit)

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2 stars (out of four)

A man is privy to the details of upcoming disasters—when, where and how many people will die. That man is Nicolas Cage. Knowing, however, that “Knowing” stars Nicolas Cage, That said,  add2Knowing that, the moviegoer now makes certain calculations: Cage, as mankind has come to understand, is not like other men. He is composed of 66 percent water, 21 percent forehead, 10 percent terrible movies and 3 percent movies that make you wonder why that other 10 percent has been so ridiculously high for so long.

And yet “Knowing” feels like an anomaly. It is something never offered by a Nicolas Cage movie. It manages to stand separate from the Nicolas Cage we’ve come to know while retaining that ol’ bat-poop crazy as we’ve come to expect. from Nicolas Cage. Indeed, it even suggests that the Cage oeuvre—one good film every four years, 17 bad ones—has not been the case of a great actor throwing talent into a wood-chipper but part of a grand plan. “Two disasters left!” he shouts, in the spirit of full disclosure.

Or possibly referring to the plot.

If he is referring to the plot (and let’s assume he is), then “Knowing” actually has the gall to suggest that there are forces in this universe larger than Nicolas Cage – and that if Nicolas Cage has no way to stop them, the rest of us should take note and tremble accordingly. In other words, without giving anything away, “Knowing,” which concerns a series of prophesies and horrific cataclysms, has the evangelical fervor of a movie that feels like it was as if it were made during W’s first term. Which is to say, “Knowing” is as potent a slice of disaster porn as “Left Behind.” It dabbles in faith and doubt and has no patience for fence-sitters.

Until it jumps the tracks into self-righteousness, though, “Knowing,” directed by Alex Proyas,Ö can also be as unnerving as the best episodes of “The Twilight Zone.” The two big disasters in the film—a plane crash and a subway derailment—are intensely vivid, nightmarish enough to seem almost removed from the rest of the film. Cage plays a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who (by Hollywood law) lost his wife in an accident and has to raise their son alone. They live in a dusty gothic mansion, its walls stripped of paint. Cage spends nights slouched in a chair swigging booze and questioning existence; Cage’s body is stooped, so concave at this point in his career that he resembles an empty oyster shell. Meanwhile, in class, he raises the difference between determinism (everything is by design) and randomness (everything means nothing), then stares off into space.

“Don’t you think you’re acting kind of awkward?” a friend asks. Which makes you wonder if this guy even knows Nicolas Cage. Anyway, During the opening of a time capsule, Cage’s spiritual crisis deepens when his son (Chandler CanterburyÖ) receives a letter containing seemingly random numbers, which turn out to be not so random but the 50-year-old work of a disturbed young girl who heard voices. In a Richard Dreyfussian fit of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”-like obsession, Cage gets all sweaty and begins to see patterns in the numbers—dates, casualty numbers, corresponding to every major disaster from the past 50 years.

What does it all mean? Well, if you believe in determinism (and coherent screenwriting), if you note that Cage’s father (in the film) is a pastor and his sister works in a hospital, and if you notice the camera lingering over a rabbit and a hearing aid, both pregnant with symbolic meaning, then we are cogs in an unraveling cosmic joke and those dates were handed down by a higher power as a warning. Or, you could believe that young girl just guessed. But I would suggest determinism. Not so coincidentally, the sun gets hot—really hot, and begins to throw out flares at the Earth. Cage discovers this at M.I.T., then goes right back to wearing a lot of suede jackets.

There are also strange men in black (again, bad fashion choice) and odd stones handed to children, and the longer it drags on, the more “Knowing” grows preachy (literally) and bears the marks of too many hands with too many tones (there were six screenwriters, including “Donnie Darko” director Richard KellyÖ). Proyas, however, whose “Dark City” and “I, Robot” left some indelible images, wrings out a few new doozies—the best of which remains Cage himself, doomed to a hell of his own doing.

cborrelli@tribune.com

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