People see what they want to see?

KNOWING, staring Nicolas Cage placed the Earth in apparent jeopardy once again. Director, Alex Proyas took us through 121 minutes of questioning, head scratching and many missed opportunities to dazzle us-  especially with the veritable army of writers and story editors this project had.

The storyline

Cage’s character, John Koestler, an MIT professor witnesses a mathematical relationship between a numbered sheet of paper that was pulled out of a 50 year-old time capsule at his son, Caleb’s, elementary school and deadly events that have happened and many yet to come! John quickly pours into researching how some little girl could possibly know 50 years ago what will happen in the future. John finds out she’s passed on, but this doesn’t stop him. He quickly jumps to digging further into this mystery, getting to the bottom of things, so he thinks. And this is where things become interesting. During the course of his research, mysterious men start to appear and are getting too close to Caleb – are these men after his son?!?  Throughout the story, believers start to think John is correct about this mysterious mathematical message from the past holding the truth for the future of Earth.  Something needs to be done—and fast …or we might all be in peril.

The cast

Cage gives a stellar performance playing a widowed father that’s had a horrible time coping with the loss of his wife. He plays a very believable alcoholic and single father, protecting his son at all costs. Caleb, played by Chandler Canterbury, also gave a fantastic performance. Chandler gave us so much more with his acting ability without the use of wordy dialogue—well done, Chandler. He’s one to watch with the resume he has already built at the age of ten! Rose Byrne plays the daughter of the girl that wrote the numbered sheet. She also was an excellent choice for this film. Line after line, she made the audience forget we were watching a film. Her character’s daughter, played by Lara Robinson, enhanced our viewing experience, delivering great acting as well. She was an excellent pairing to Canterbury—hats off to Gregory Apps and Teresa Redlin with casting for this project.

The good, bad, and indifferent

This film just didn’t do it for me. The premise was there, but I felt like the storyline wasn’t tight enough, something was missing or there was just too much that didn’t mesh well together. The big “punches” just were missed in telling this story. As I further investigated who wrote this I found out over six individuals were responsible for the story—way too many. This I believe is a textbook example of what can happen when there are too many opinions crammed into one story telling. Also, if the viewer really has to think about out-of-this-world concepts throughout, the creators missed the mark. Give us everything. You’re telling us something we didn’t know, so lay everything out and help us link the clues together better. If you’re a fan of Nick, you won’t be disappointed. He really did a great job, nothing incredibly out of his comfort zone of the hero, he didn’t exactly leap out of his range – he gave me the performance I was expecting to see.

Bottom line

Not a bad movie to watch at home, but shelling out some hard-earned cash for the theater – no. Save your dough for that new can opener that doubles as a beard trimmer or better yet that sticky-be-gone stuff to finally peel off that, “Go Hillary,” bumper sticker.  Give it a break man, she lost… a long time ago, in a galaxy,  f a r, f a r away …

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 8:45 pm and is filed under 3, ck, Film Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.