Knowing

Knowing, Alex Proyas’s new film is a genre confused cinematic venture nothing like his superbly focused I, Robot the futuristic thriller with Will Smith battling an individual robot seeking to retain his electronic individuality.

Knowing starts off promising but literally gets lots in the woods as a frantic Nicolas Cage gets caught up in a script which is genre-hopping between Deep Impact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Hide and Seek. Besides the storyline which counterpoints between sci-fi, horror and disaster film and leaves the audience wondering whether the great concept of a time capsule should have rather been opened by a more competent group of screenwriters. Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne stumble through a thinly developed storyline with minimal dialogue only to allow the child actors to steal what credibility the film has with an unusual tenacity

While some fantastic moments abound, Knowing lacks the originality and clear vision of I, Robot and similar popular sci-fi films like Minority Report and Blade Runner. Alex Proyas should know better especially with the vast repertoire of brilliant sci-fi/disaster films that he could have drawn on as a conceptual frame and maybe using one scriptwriter is always a knowingly safe bet.

What is Knowing really about? Leave it to the viewer to decide…

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