Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #685 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-08-03
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Synopsis
Based on a story by author Ryne Douglas Pearson, KNOWING is a moody sci-fi thriller starring Nicolas Cage as John Koestler, a widowed MIT astrophysicist who lives in wooded seclusion with his young son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury). When Caleb is handed an envelope unearthed from a school time capsule buried 50 years earlier, its cryptic numerical sequence captures the interest of his dad, who soon realises the powerful significance of the document, which seems to predict major world disasters throughout history. Unfortunately, there are three calamities that have yet to unfold, and John, aided reluctantly by single mother Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne) and her daughter, Abby (Lara Robinson), must try to unravel the mystery of the numbers before many more lives are lost.

Alex Proyas's follow-up to 2004's I, ROBOT, returns to the shadowy atmosphere of the director's revered cult film, DARK CITY, while staying within the realm of the Hollywood big-budget disaster movie. Though the plot takes some outlandish turns, the film is grounded by solid performances from Cage, Byrne, and the impressive child actors, and Proyas further anchors the proceedings in moments of captivatingly bleak realism. Like the remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, KNOWING is a pensive and melancholy thriller that rewards discerning viewers willing to follow its strange and intriguing tale.

Customer Reviews

95% brilliant - spoilt by the ending
`Knowing' begins in 1959 when an elementary school is celebrating its open by burying a time capsule containing the students' drawings of their thoughts of what the future will look like when its opened again in 50 years time. Instead of doing a drawing, one young girl named Lucinda writes down a series of seemingly random numbers. 50 years later, the time capsule is opened and the drawings are given to the students. A boy named Caleb gets the page containing Lucinda's numbers. His father Jon (Nicolas Cage) is a professor of astrophysics and one night he notices that one of the number sequence is the date of the 9/11 attacks and it's death toll. After spending the night looking into this with the help of the internet, Jon realises that the numbers are all dates and death tolls of major disasters over the past 50 years. However there are 3 dates that are yet to come.

I've been looking forward to seeing this film for absolutely ages and I finally got to see it at the weekend and I would of loved to be writing this review now saying that it was amazing but the last 5 minutes completely let this down. Literally 95% of this film is absolutely perfect, it has everything - mystery, suspense, horror, action. The disaster sequences were some of the most impressive and shocking scenes I've seen in this type of film, the supernatural elements of it were very chilling and quite scary at times, the storyline was very good for a majority of the film with some really good ideas, the acting was excellent especially from Cage who plays his part very believably, it was just the last 5 minutes of the film that ruined this for me. I'm not going to spoil it and say what happened but when I was watching this part I actually thought to myself "are they serious!?" as it is just so ridiculous - people in the cinema were actually laughing!

As well as the bad ending there are a lot of plot holes too but is so exciting and suspenseful that this won't matter. If you like films such as Signs, War of the Worlds, The Happening and The Day After Tomorrow, you will more than likely love this. Personally I thought it was great but if I watched it again (which I will), I may have to switch off before the end as it really did spoil it for me.

If Only For The Special Effects.
A troubled young girl in 1959 is asked along with her fellow elementary school students to contribute something to the school's `time capsule'. She scribbles a series of random and perfectly spaced numbers furiously until the teacher snatches it from her hands. Then, of course, she freaks out. Fifty years later, there is a ceremony where the children's contributions are randomly handed out to the modern young students. The paper with the random numbers ends up in the hands of little Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), whose father is widower John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), an astrophysicist teacher at Boston's M.I.T. There he believes all of life is random and there is no heaven, but teaches his son otherwise. Add a house in psychical disarray and you have the start of a movie you've seen before.

By accident, Koestler (Cage, not very smart looking to be a M.I.T. professor) discovers the date of 9/11/2001 and the number of people who died in the paper of numbers. Then in a drunken frenzied evening, he finds more disasters and similarities evenly spaced out in the puzzle of numebrs. He places these on a large piece of white board. Very pretty. I guess a professor of his intelligence could figure this out over one night while drunk. However, there are still gaps with mysterious numbers. Koestler shares this info with a comrade who thinks he's nuts, but then begins to believe him after it's discovered that the odd numbers are actually the longitude and latitude of the deadly events that have and will occur.

At this point, the audience is wondering when the action will start. I have to admit that once the disasters start occurring, it's mayhem that is so well filmed (CGI well done) and executed, the look, sound and feel is very real. Koestler witnesses a plane crash with an aftermath of hell that is just about the best filming of a crashing plane ever done. Then Koestler figures that a terrorist's attack will occur in a New York City subway. With some twists and running action, including the police trying to catch a wild man named Koestler. The subway disaster is even more realistic than the place crash, with cars flying down tunnels, through walls and making you swear you'll never ride the subway again. Of course, Koestler survives somehow (he is the star).

Add into this mix four strange mute adults that are `whispering' to the children and trying to get close to Koestler's son as well as the young grand-daughter of the troubled young girl from 1959 who scribbled all those numbers down. It gets weirder. By this time, you're just about worn out, and Koestler realizes with his comrade that the end of the world might be around the corner. Oh, and there is an excellent speeding car scene with the heroine's car getting sideswiped by a huge semi-trailer. This is another great, heart-stopping scene.

The ending is a disappointing Spielberg-esque cliché that is only relieved with a final set of special effects that rival "Armageddon" and "The Day After Tomorrow". After you regain your breath, you're treated to a final saccharin scene that is like something out of "Alice in Wonderland".

"Knowing" is a series of old clichés and middle-of-the-road acting, but the special effects are right up there with the best. Does that make buying this DVD a necessity? I think not, but viewing can be a heart-racing experience, especially with a good home theater system. Turn up the volume!

Knowing?
I watched this film in open-mouthed astonishment. Simply frightening and ludicrous. I can only imagine it was funded by a neo-conservative Christian think-tank. God speaks in numbers to convert one physicist to a belief in heaven, as it's the only consolation for the impending apocalypse, and sends a sinister non-verbal envoy of angels to take the children to another planet, an Eden would you believe. Incomprehensible numbers and scary men. Frankly, if this is the way god does business, give him the finger and go to the devil.

The son of an agnostic physicist (Cage) is given a page from a time-capsule buried fifty years ago. Upon this page are a string of numbers from left to right, top to bottom. At one glance, whiskey in hand, Cage 'discovers' within that apparently random string the date 9/11 followed by the number of deaths. Cage's character decides to check other substrings for corresponding disasters and interprets the results as a series of disaster predictions. Ah, but, as a fellow scientist points out, there's a flaw, there's an unaccounted for series of numbers between substrings.

Soon a group of sinister men appear and menace his son. They look like the Spike fan-club, bleached blond and trench-coated. Cage pursues them and demands an explanation. The neo-Spike opens his mouth and Cage is blasted with light and sound. Oh, so he's the 'MEGAPHONE,' or whatever god's mouthpiece is called. Why does god send such sinister looking men? Oh, I see, it'd be no good for the suspense if they were friendly.

Anyhow, the loose numbers turn out to be latitude and longitude coordinates would you believe. I see god keeps in touch with the minutiae of human existence. He never sent me a card on my birthday. Surely, it would simply have been easier for the almighty to have told Cage's character outright or display some incontrovertible evidence of his omnipotence rather than to use a device that looks like a hackneyed conjuring trick.

Oh, I can't be bothered. Ludicrous premise and more holes in the plot than a field plagued by moles. One thing, however, the words of black comedian reflecting on Star Trek spring to my mind: if this is the future, where are all the black people. Likewise, if this is modern America, and the heaven to be, where are all the black people.

I had to give it one star as there was no option for none.