Film Review: Knowing

I caved. The pressure got to me again. I sacrificed half of my principles and $20 or so of my dollars (between Mrs. Fletch and I). I had to see if the unintentional comedy could remotely come close to matching The Wicker Man. That’s right – I saw Knowing. And you know what? I friggin’ liked it. Alex Proyas’ apocalyptic time capsule thriller somehow managed to sink its claws into me early on, its linear jumping framed confidently by the director. Showing that same steady hand, he even manages to coax a subtle (at times), dare I say powerful performance out of his star, the traditionally awful Nic Cage. Lost in a sea of chaos searching for answers, Cage offers up the numerically mad manic energy that Jim Carrey failed to grasp in the similarly themed The Number 23, though the end-of-the-world gravitas that Knowing brings might have been the bigger key at play. Sure, there’s some unintentional comedy to be had, including, but not limited to, Cage whacking a tree with a baseball bat whilst screaming about ‘whisper people,’ but it never gets out of hand and, thankfully, a hair is never wildly out of place. While it may not be the four-star gem that Roger Ebert declared it to be, Knowing is certainly worth a look, and forced me to eat just a little bit of crow.