Like Michael Bay below, has his style, I knew I’d seen the shades and angles in this thriller/sci-fi or sci-fi/thriller flick. Alex Proyas is the dude that came up with the incredible and never-seen-before, ingenuous, darkly refreshing ‘Dark City’ which, at the time (1998), really really blew my mind. A little more wiki-ing and I discover that he is also behind The Crow, also one of my top ten movies ever.
I almost did not watch this movie because I reckoned it was another Nicolas Cage pick which is sometimes just fun to watch but you feel yourself losing a few brain cells for watching them. The premise of ‘Next’ and the embellished-for-dramatic-expedience ‘American history’ of National Treasure left us all a little dumber and I just do not trust Nicolas’ choices.
So because there was a problem with Bruno reel at the cinema () I had to fall back on watching Knowing and I am soooo glad I did.
SPOILER BELOW!!!!
I have very mixed feelings about this movie though, mainly because it tries to cram so many ideas into it that these ideas do not always gel nicely together. There is loss, there is father-son relationships across generations, there is science, there are aliens there is time travel, there is family, there are people that see the future, there are stones and much much more. I am sure when I watch this again, all these bits and pieces will gel but on a first viewing it was too much to piece together.
This is an Armageddon movie, it is about the end of the world and how we as humans would face this prospect if we knew for sure that it was coming.
The movie follows an MIT professor’s discovery of this certainty and his way of dealing with his and the world’s end. This is where the sentimentality of the movie unsettles me a little. I get that sometimes this sentiment is often what is lacking in other flicks where the focus is on the special effects and the exquisite bodies of the lead characters. I get that and I think it was right for Proyas to spend a little time for us connect with these characters. The thing is though, even with this, I was unable to mist up at the end when all the investment is suppose to pay off.
On the other hand the effects in this, like we had in Dark City, are not your every day Michael Bay explosions (I am sorry but I am going to use Mr Bay as a reference for all over the top bad action movies from now on) with no meaning. The big effects scenes were incredible and there was one specific scene that I swear was straight out of my nightmares. I have this recurring nightmare where I actually witness a plane crash and the way that Proyas shot this particular scene instantly took me back to that nightmare of mine. The plane crash scene we see in the previews is spectacular and I thought this would be the highlight of the movie but it was not. Moments following the crash are incredible. Having just had the two recent plane crashes in the real world it is a wonder they did not delay the release of this movie.
Also, there is another nightmare scene where the little boy in the movie sees somebody in his room in the middle of the night and is paralysed unable to scream or run. I am sure you’ve had that dream as well. This scene was so perfectly shot that you instantly remember your own personal nightmares.
So ya, on style, look and feel, Knowing gets 5 spoons. On the idea, premise and plot flow of the movie, I give it 3.
My issues with the movie, The main character of the movie is an MIT professor and he struggles to convince people that the numbers uncovered in the time capsule predict the future. If people do not believe an MIT professor, who the hell is there to believe?! That’s like not believing Einstein if he says the square root of 4 is 2. They should have made the character a high school teacher or something because even in the opening scene, he is suppose to be giving a lecture to MIT students, the lecture was more on the level of philosophical questions for dummies.
