Knowing

Sometime around the turn of the millennium, Nicholas Cage, the star of many enjoyable action and comedy films, died. The events of his death are shrouded in mystery. What we do know is that for some reason, Hollywood decided that the world could not survive without Nic Cage, and for that reason, in some kind of Terminator-esque procedure, Cage’s skin was planted onto a robotic body. Thus, the world was given the CAGEbot, whose characteristics include an inability to show emotion, over-acting, appearing to not even be trying, bad hairpieces, and choosing horrible scripts.

By now, I should know to stay away from CAGEbot films, but I don’t. I watched it in Bangkok Dangerous and was in awe of how horrible it was. I had hoped that by this point technology had advanced far enough that we could get human-like robots, but the CAGEbot is proof of the limits of modern technology. It literally cannot pass for human. That being said, every once in a while, they are able to program the CAGEbot in a way that he delivers a fantastic performance (Adaptation and Matchstick Men) or at least it can pass as human long enough to deliver a fun performance (National Treasure). So, with the hope of good programming and the promise of good disaster effects, I made a conscious decision to see Knowing.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before on this site, but I break movies down into one of two ways: offensively and unoffensively bad. The latter is a movie that best be described as “meh.” You know it’s bad, but the reason why doesn’t jump out at you. If you think about, you can come up with reasons, but they’re never glaring. Unoffensively bad movies also don’t usually take themselves too seriously, and tend to know that they aren’t great movies. Knowing does not fall into this category. It is offensively bad to the point that I was actually angry about it.

To talk too much about this movie is in itself giving it too much credit, so I’m going to keep my comments as short as possible, though if I wanted to, I could deconstruct this film on a Quantum of Solace level (see below). Of course the movies dies right off the bat, because the CAGEbot literally could not act. It was out acted in every single scene, and not just by the other actors. The extras seem to have its number as well. If you had taken any random person in the theater, they could have done a better than CAGEbot. Rose Byrne was also horrible. I watch damages, and I know she can act, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re doing a back and forth with the CAGEbot.

The story has potential, but is executed poorly. Proyas seems to be more concerned about directing the disaster scenes than what happens in between, which is actually the heart of the movie. The part that makes this decision even worse is that the disaster scenes are not well done. The CGI is very weak, and with the exception of one two-second shot in the subway scene, they are poorly shot and framed. This movie also has one of the most intrusive and badly composed scores I have ever heard. The movie knows no subtlety, using the score to scream in the audience’s face how they should be feeling. ”Hear that music! This scene is so intense! Hear this music! It sure is creepy!”

Knowing is basically the antithesis of the other movie I saw that weekend, Monsters vs. Aliens (review above). One did everything right, had great performances and dialogue, and was visually stunning. The other did everything wrong, had horrible performances and cliched dialogue, and was visually unimpressive. To sum it all up, MvA put a smile on my face the entire film and it didn’t go away until I went to sleep. During Knowing, I actually contemplated punching myself in the face to take my mind off the movie.