Review of Knowing (2009) by Filipeneto — 04 Aug 2018

When I started watching this movie I was excited. Finally, a good sci-fi movie, with touches of suspense and horror, and a nice tension. In fact, the two major strengths of this film are the visual components (airplane disaster or scenes of looting crowds, closer to the end, are visually impressive, for example) and the central idea of ​​the plot: a numeric prophecy investigated by a skeptical mathematician. The problem is that the good things in the movie end here.

From the middle, the film loses quality. With prophecies solved the plot thread ends. From there, the film extends because it has to close the story anyway, giving rise to plot holes the size of houses and inserting immense religious symbology for no reason. I read a comment that said the movie is full of subliminal propaganda to Church of Scientology... well, I actually detected symbols with religious connotations, but I'm not an expert in subliminal messages or in that sect to properly identify a connection to a specific cult. Another problem is the hammy and unnatural performance of Nicolas Cage, who ceases to be skeptical too suddenly and unbelievably. At the beginning of the film, he lectures at MIT in which he approaches determinism and coincidentality... even this could have been best used in the script! The film is loaded with CGI of fairly medium quality, but the end is more worthy of a computer game than a movie.