Knowing

Director Alex Proyas might best be known for his work with the film I, Robot. On March 20, 2009 he released his new action/sci-fi movie, titled Knowing; it was received amidst raving reviews and four-star ratings galore. Curious and skeptical of its storyline and potential, I went to see the movie yesterday.

The movie opens up in a small town in Massachusetts. The year is 1959, and a brand new elementary school is concocting a way of celebrating its opening day. A contest is held amongst the students to see who can come up with the best idea. The winning idea comes from Lucinda Embry, a girl who the audience can tell from the beginning is not like the other children in her class. She hears voices (whom she calls "the whisper people" ) talking to her and is often caught in a daze. Her idea is to bury a time capsule, filled with pictures that the students drew of what they imagined the future will look like, that will be opened 50 years from the day. While the other students are busy drawing rocket ships and flying cars, Lucinda fills her paper up with a seemingly random string of numbers. Unfortunately, her teacher prevents her from finishing her "drawing" and the paper is taken away to be buried in the capsule. After Lucinda goes missing during the burial of the capsule, her teacher finds her in a closet scratching the remaining numbers into the door.

Fast forward to present day, 50 years after the capsule has been buried. The pictures of the students from five decades ago are being handed out, and young Caleb Koestler is given the envelope with Lucinda's curious numbers. His father, MIT professor and astrophysicist John Koestler (played by Nicolas Cage) first dismisses the "drawing" as random, but soon discovers that they actually hold a pattern. He first spies the sequence 911012996 and, after putting spaces between the numbers, figures out that it is a date: 9/11/01. The four numbers at the end - 2996 - represent the number of people who died on that day. John soon figures out the pattern: all of the numbers are dates of epic disasters and catastrophes that occurred, in perfect sequence. The numbers after the dates are the exact death toll. Then there are remaining, un-circled numbers after the death toll with John cannot figure out at first; later he discovers that the numbers after the death toll are the latitude and longitude of where the events occurred. The dates, deaths, and places had been tracked 50 years prior to anything ever happening.

John is then thrust in a race against time, as there are three disasters on the list that have not yet occurred. Along with his son Caleb, Diana Wayland, and her daughter Abby (the daughter and granddaughter of Lucinda Embry), he tries to warn the world of the epic tragedies that will come to happen. It is only when Caleb and Abby are visited by "the whisper people" that had haunted Lucinda decades before that John comes to realize there is more to the numbers than meets the eye.

The movie was jam-packed with suspense and a little terror every now and then. I was pleasantly surprised that everything I thought would happen, did not happen. Everything was unexpected but it still made sense with the rest of the movie. The special effects were phenomenal, and the acting was better than I expected.

My only complaint would be that the film was just a bit too depressing for my taste. I had walked in the theater with thoughts full of "saving the world," but when I left I was in a totally different mindset. My advice would be this: if you want to/plan to see Knowing, you have to realize it is not a "feel-good" movie and there are rarely any legitimate happy endings in real life. Yes, it is meant to entertain, but this particular film could also serve as a word of caution for anyone who watches it.

As the film clearly states, "knowing is everything."

Trailer: Knowing International Trailer