Knowing (2009)
Destiny In a Handbasket
Zombos Says: Excellent
That particular sequence caused me no end of headaches and nightmares, because we decided at an early stage to get it all in one continuous shot. So from the moment when the plane crashes into the freeway and goes breaking up and exploding into a field, Nic’s character then pursues, and runs into the maelstrom and tries to save people (from Alex Proyas interview).
I am taken aback by the negative–at Times, vitriolic– criticism for Nicolas Cage and director Alex Proyas’ dark, apocalyptic thriller Knowing; such disdain is usually reserved for horror films, not more mainstream fare. As he did in Dark City, Proyas conjures another sepia-toned vision of determinism, fate, and faith, and ratchets up the tension with three carefully crafted, special effects-laden scenes of death and destruction before finishing with an outstanding fourth. Cage, as astrophysicist John Koestler, portrays an everyman, quirks and all, coiled and held tight in the moments, filled with knowledge but mostly powerless. Borrowing the science fiction staples of pending global cataclysm (seen in 1951’s When Worlds Collide, slated to be remade in 2010 by Stephen Sommers), and celestial intervention, Knowing is an emotionally charged drama meticulously combining horror, science fiction, and fantasy conventions into an absorbing story worthy of more serious, and less caustic, critique.
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