This movie is about a little girl whose scribblings turn out to be a foretelling of great disasters and losses of life. Her scribblings, sealed in a time capsule, end up in the hands of Nicolas Cage's son, and Cage - who believably plays a professor who teaches astrophysics at MIT. Really - deciphers the pattern.
The producers missed one major disaster off the list though – this fucking movie.
I've enjoyed Alex Proyas movies in the past, The Crow and Dark City spring lovingly to mind. But this? Utter gash. As we were watching, I said to my lovely wife, "I bet this was once a small indie script that Cage got involved in and then it became this bloated, nonsensical piece of shit." I romantically imagined it might be like The Man From Earth or something similar.
Aaaaaaanyway, Cage finds the little girl's daughter and granddaughter (the girl having grown up, bred and died), and tries to solve the riddles of the next disasters. He does end up Johnny-on-the-spot for two of them, big shaggy effects sequences that are noisy, daft and unnecessary, but then if they weren't there, what else could they have spent the budget on?
A decent script would have been great. Hell, a decent leading man would have been a start. There's a moment where - and there are spoilers ahead - Cage realises that not only is the world about to end, he is packing his son off to be with a race of aliens who will repopulate the earth after we're all ashes. His reaction? He falls to his knees with his mouth open a little bit, and says simply 'No'. Now, I'm not looking for over-reaction – just some recognisable emotion. Anything. A tremor in your face. A tear. Panic underneath, with strength on top to help your son be calm about his journey into the unknown... Anything but what I saw.
Hell, I could have made this much shorter by just giving you WonderWife's brilliant summary: "I'm looking forward to not remembering this film."
PS: The movie is worth watching for the aeroplane crash, which is ham-fisted at best, with Cage wandering around and trying to help people who are burning while wearing the same expression he has on for 7/8 of the movie. Then afterward when he's at home, he utters the wonderful line, "I keep seeing their faces… burning". Trust me, it's funnier than it sounds…
Sunday, 30 May 2010
Knowing
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7 comments:
I keep meaning to see this flick for the cringe factor alone. My God...Nic Cage is just so awful!
Funny thing is, a friend of ours came round a couple of days before this arrived in the post telling us about this great movie she'd seen... When she told me what it was, I thought "There's no way that's a good movie". I'd put it on the rental list for comedy value - and because one never quite knows what WonderWife will like. I'm so, so glad she hated it too.
Of course, that woman is no longer a friend. I mean, if she likes this shite... What does that make us???
thats so good, very nice. . .
i like it
hi from mas raden
mas-raden thinks this review was good and very nice.
Mas Raden likes my post, too!
Sounds like Nic Cage has gone to the Keanu Reeves school of acting!
SybLaw, judging by this movie and some other shite I saw him in recently, he is desperately searching for his Matrix. He is no Keanu - and I say that both with and without my tongue in my cheek. Which isn't easy.
"The producers missed one major disaster off the list though – this fucking movie."
LOLOLOL! So true. I didn't think this movie would ever end.
Worst moment for me? When Rose Byrne steals the SUV and promptly crashes. Fast-forward and Cage somehow knows she's in the ambulance at the accident scene and everyone just lets him wander thru.
"Excuse me, I'm the guy this lady met two days ago and the reason she killed herself in this collision"
"In that case, right this way sir"
Utter crap.
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