"Knowing" sucks

Sorry to say I saw this one in the theater. When the twist hit, we couldn't help laughing, it was so awful.

Cage owes me $10.

 

He actually had a pretty decent stretch from 2002-2006, making Windtalkers, Adaptation, Matchstick Men (which is severely underrated), National Treasure, Lord of War and World Trade Center. I don't think I've seen any of the movies he's made since then.

Oh, and the worst movie ever made is 'The Happening.' In a suckfest death match, I think Marky Mark comes out way ahead of Nic Cage.

 

I just watched it today. The twist was really just a deus ex machina. Weak.

 

Wasn't Ghost Rider also in that stretch? Not the best comic book movie ever made, but I've found it surprisingly watchable whenever it's been on Encore.

 

Why couldn't he have put the script back in the box?

 

Solid pull.

 

Ebert defends his love of the movie:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090322/COMMENTARY/903229997

The original review (4 stars):

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090318/REVIEWS/903189991/1023

And subsequent blog post about the movie's implications (fascinating even if you hated the movie):

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/03/a_roll_of_whose_dice.html

 

Ebert's lost on this one. It's a manipulative piece of dreck.

SPOILER ALERT:


Cage is frantically hunting for his son. The woman who was taking his son to safety was at a gas station as all hell is breaking loose. Apparently, she leaves the kids in the car WITH THE KEYS. Her car goes peeling out of the gas station. She comes running out, jumps into another car ... which also miraculously has keys in it.

So now she's in a car that Cage can't possibly know she's in. He's still looking for his kid, and frantic. But he happens upon the scene of a horrible crash. Who knows why he bothers to stop? But he does. And it's her, and she just happens to have the final clue to where his children are.

And why would the aliens be trying to warn us about our impending doom by whispering to children, leaving impenetrable clues for 50 years? Higher beings? Hell, these are the worst communicators in history. If they were that interesting in saving humanity, wouldn't they have tried a more direct approach? How about sky writing?

When the world is coming to an end there's panic and rioting in the streets. But Cage's character has no problem cruising into Boston from out of town in a couple of hours. Apparently, nobody else is driving their cars.

Then the kids are dumped on some planet with waving grains and a tree. Boy and girl. Was that the genesis of the Adam and Eve story when Earth was started? We can never know, because that's in the last five seconds of the movie.

The whole thing sets us up to feel the deep sadness of a father having to let go of his son. I was teary-eyed at the end, then furious. Manipulative crap.

 

Eh, I just watched this movie and here are my thoughts.

After seeing the end of this flick, I feel Knowing is basically "Contact 2" in the sense that it's an intriguing flick, an interesting idea but the end wasn't set up well enough for the casual movie fan to accept it as anything other than a cop out.

Given time, I think this flick will look better but I understand why people love/hate it.

Personally, I applaud the film makers for trying something different. I love the idea of (SPOILER) actually seeing the world end in one of these disaster movies.

The only thing is, they don't explain the significance of anything.

If Nic Cage couldn't prevent the end of the world, why waste time giving him the numbers? Why, of the six billion or so people on this world, were Caleb and the girl chosen? What's with those black egg things?

Aside from that, the special effects made the movie more than enjoyable for me and proved to be a decent, albeit flawed, movie watching experience.

 

Would it have helped you to watch the movie knowing the ending? I get the sense that if you were expecting the "twist" (and I use that term loosely), you might have felt better.

Might a second viewing make up for what you perceived as shortcomings?

The only movie I can compare this to is Contact. I was riveted for that entire flick only to be blindsided and pissed at the shitty ending. Once I rewatched it knowing the ending sucked, it wasn't as bad.

 

Because of all this, I will spend $1.08 at the Red Box to rent and watch this.
Thanks.

 

The ending was what made me decide to skip it. The trailers looked awesome, and sold me on a movie about Nicolas Cage trying to stop disasters based on a creepy list of numbers that told him when they would happen.

Instead, it was an end-of-the-world/alien flick.