Movie Review - Knowing (2009)

Starring Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne
Directed by Alex Proyos

There's quite a bit wrong with this movie. Two pretty awful performances from a comatose Nicolas Cage and an awkwardly angry and anxious Rose Byrne. Some poor special effects. But, for some unknown reason, this movie works much better than it has any right to.

The premise is fairly simple. Fifty years ago, a young elementary school girl wrote down a series of numbers on a piece of paper that were placed in a time capsule. Jump to now and the capsule is being opened. Nicolas Cage is a professor and his son happens to bring home this page of numbers. Cage soon discovers that the numbers foretold of hundreds of disasters that have occurred in the past fifty years. And, unfortunately, there are three disasters left on that piece of paper...and the worst was of course saved for last.

Like I said above, Nic Cage is awful here, although he's actually overshadowed in absurdity by Rose Byrne as the daughter of the crazy number lady from fifty years ago. Byrne, who I think is so good in the tv show Damages, is laughably bad...she's required to scream and yell and it was simply torturous to hear. And the two child actors that play a major role here were nothing great either.

Yet, the story and the way everything unfolds in this movie won me over. The religious overtones that come into play aren't shied away from and, in the last scene, one can't help but think of a famous story from the Bible (I don't want to give anything away).

I've got to say that I was quite surprised about this one. I've had it sitting at home for nearly four months now from Netflix and I've been dreading watching it (sure, I could've sent it back, but I find it difficult to do that without watching it, I guess). Yes, it reminds me of a silly 1950s/60s sci fi movie, but it works despite its many, many issues.

The RyMickey Rating: C+