What’s this all about?
In 2009, following the box office bomb that was Bangkok Dangerous, Nicolas Cage ventured into somewhat calmer territory with Knowing, the story of a widowed MIT professor raising his young son while also dealing with the most preposterous series of coincidences possible, and a global extinction event.
Following the death of his wife, Nick’s character struggles to manage his work with his family life, compounded by mysterious strangers who seem intent on interacting with his son, and a cryptic letter from a little girl in the 1960’s that seems to predict just about every major disaster in history.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “John Koestler,” an awkward MIT professor who teaches some sort of combined astronomy/philosophy course. He has a penchant for getting too wrapped up in his work and neglecting his responsibilities for young son. His father is some sort of preacher, and this causes some undefined tension in the family.
Who else is in this one?
There are no big names, aside from Nick, in this one, but I want to call out a couple of noteworthy performances.
Chandler Canterbury plays “Caleb,” John’s son. He was 10 when this film was made, and I thought that his performance was very good for such a young actor. He’s believable, but not precocious or “screamy” throughout. This script required a “serious” child actor, and he delivered.
Lara Robinson plays “Abby,” John’s sister. It’s a fairly minor role that seems to exist to remind us that John has some estranged family, and to answer the question, “wait, who’s watching Caleb?” Robinson’s casting here is a mystery to me. Born in Melbourne, the actress has a distinct and obvious Australian accent. She’s meant to be the daughter of a Massachusetts preacher who works as an EMT. What conceivable reason could she have for that accent. It’s bizarrely distracting.
Liam Hemsworth (Thor) plays one of John’s students. He’s in a single scene with about two lines. He managed to hide his Melbourne accent, so that’s cool!
Did you see that?
After several creepy encounters with mystery men who seem fascinated with his son, Nick buys a gun, which I would consider a reasonable decision. We’re shown this in a scene in which Nick comes home from running unspecified errands, and carefully takes a revolver out of its factory packaging, and reads the manual.
It’s very much how I would expect an MIT professor with no background in firearms to behave.
What amused me though, was the gun’s packaging. The revolver was in a hard, plastic molded case with the owner’s manual on top of the gun. That’s exactly how most revolvers are packaged.
That case, though, was in a brown paper bag. Like the kind you bring your lunch to school in.
I’ve purchased literally dozens of firearms, and in exactly zero cases, has the gun shop put them in any kind of bag. It made me wonder if this was done just to obscure the fact that Nick was walking into the house with a gun (although he made no further attempt to hide it), or if somebody on set said, “wait, this guy is a super-awkward nerd. He’d be really self-conscious about buying a gun. He’d probably do something weird, like buying a bunch of random non-gun items to make his purchase seem less suspicious, or ask for a bag,” and they ran with it.
Either way, I thought it was funny. -Michael
In the last scene the two kids took two bunnies to the new world. This was super weird to me. And why were they running all happy in a field when they got there? Where were they supposed to live? How were they going to survive? So many unanswered questions. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
Nick’s performance was pretty good throughout this film. He oversold the “awkward” in a couple of scenes, and cranked up the intensity too much in a couple more, but for the most part, he was very believable.
I think his best scene was very near the end, when he realizes that he can’t go with his son to be one of the few survivors of the human race. He really conveys his sadness and fear while trying to calmly explain things to his son. -Michael
Nick was consistent in his performance. I’m going to call out a scene when he realized the prediction was real and started to freak out. I found his performance very realistic. I especially liked the scene where he approached his friend and how he kept acknowledging how what he was saying was absolutely crazy and ridiculous. – Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
The main plot of this movie involves Nick discovering a document that accurately predicts tragedies. He’s spent a long night partially deciphering the impossibly long string of numbers, and he takes it to one of his scientist friends to show them.
Of course, initially, he isn’t believed, as his claims are preposterous.
While trying to further explain his discovery, Nick resorts to frantically screaming one or two random words for emphasis. No one in the world except Nick Cage communicates like this, and it’s a tired trope at this point. -Michael
I found the scene where he ran outside to chase and scare the boogie men / aliens away to be the worst. It should have been scary, suspenseful, and disturbing. Instead it was awkward and a bit funny. Not at all what I’m sure they were going for. -Sarah
How was the movie?
This isn’t a bad movie. In fact, it might be a good movie. The acting is generally good. The writing is fine. The premise is absolutely fascinating.
It basically boils down to, “what if somebody could predict future disasters, but couldn’t really do anything about it? What if that predictive ability also showed them the end of the world, and it was coming relatively soon?”
To turn this premise into a narrative, the filmmakers opted to string together some pretty bold co-incidences that I think went too far. Here’s a chronological breakdown.
In the late 60’s, a young girl is suddenly beset upon by visions of terrifying calamities, including the dates, death tolls, and geographical locations of these disasters, which the child begins compulsively scribbling onto a sheet of paper.
So far, pretty cool.
By coincidence, her school has recently decided (at the child’s recommendation) to inter a time capsule to be opened in 50 years. Each student in the school is to draw a picture of what they think the world will look like in 50 years for inclusion in the time capsule.
By coincidence, the piece of paper that the child is scribbling her future visions on is the piece of paper that was supposed to contain her drawing. The teacher, fed up with the kid’s weirdness, just snatches the paper scrawled with numbers, and includes it in the time capsule.
OK. I guess that’s fine. I don’t know why she would do that, but whatever.
It turns out that the child is getting the visions because she is one of the few who can hear aliens whispering a warning to mankind. This drives her mad, and she eventually (as an adult) ends up dying of a drug overdose in a remote trailer.
50 years later, Nick’s kid goes to that same school. At the reveal of the time capsule, by coincidence, Nick’s kid is randomly given the girl’s scrawl, which he takes home instead of returning as he was told to do.
That seems like a stretch, but whatever.
Nick’s kid begins to be stalked by strange men.
At home, Nick happens to see the strange scrawled note, which is literally one page, front and back, covered with seemingly ransom numbers.
By coincidence, he spots the grouping “911012996” which he recognizes as the date and the death toll of the September 11th attacks. This causes him to start digging deeper, and he identifies a pattern that shows all major disasters in the past, and many in the future.
Wait, so he just noticed “911012996” on a page of numbers, and went, “hey, I recognize that!” I’m not buying it, but OK.
Nick decodes some future disasters, but is powerless to predict their location. Later, while stuck in traffic on his way to pick up his son, Nick looks at the longitude/lattitude display on his GPS. Just then, by coincidence, a plane crashes across the highway that he’s on, and Nick narrowly escapes death. He realizes that the numbers that he can’t decode are the geographical locations of the disasters in longitude and latitude form.
So he just happened to be at the site of a plane crash, and also looking at the lattitude/longitude on his GPS? That’s crazy. Also, how can events like 9/11 have a single geographic location?
Seeking more answers, Nick tracks down the daughter of the original little girl (remember her) who has a daughter of her own, just the same age as Nick’s kid. It turns out that Nick’s kid is also hearing the “whispers” of the aliens and is one of the chosen few, as is the new woman’s daughter.
Am I supposed to believe this? This is just insane coincidence stacked on top of insane coincidence. The whole plot just falls apart if you think about it at all.
Then the movie commits my personal pet peeve. After a perfectly good ending in which Nick’s son and the woman’s daughter are taken away by aliens to survive the planet destroying apocalypse, leaving Nick behind, the movie just keeps going.
Nick goes home to see his parents, and the aliens drop the kids off on a cheerful CGI planet. Some rabbits are there.
We didn’t need any of that. The movie was over. The story was done. Nobody was going to walk out of the theater and say, “but what happened to Nick’s elderly father who was in only one scene when the world got destroyed?” or “how long is the grass on the planet where the aliens take the surviving humans?” -Michael
Okay, I’m not sure how to follow all that. It wasn’t a great movie, but it wasn’t bad and Nicks performance was consistent. It’s an okay flick. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
Despite my prior rant, I rather enjoyed the movie. It’s not the mind-blower that it wants to be, but it’s enjoyable and well made. It tripled its budget at the box office.-Michael
For the most part I enjoyed it. It wasn’t a bad evening at home and we’ve certainly seen worse on our Nick Cage Movie Nights. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
It’s on Amazon Prime.
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