Movie Review Knowing

Knowing (2009)

Directed by Alex Proyas 

Written by Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White 

Starring Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Liam Hemsworth, Ben Mendelsohn

Release Date March 20th, 2009

Published March 20th, 2009 

I feel I may owe Nicholas Cage a modest apology. In rereading a few past reviews of his films I find that I have spent an inordinate amount of time commenting on his hair. In my defense, Cage's hair has seemed like a separate entity all its own in many of Cage's films. That receding, patchy fro from in Adaptation, the wild out of control hairline from Bangkok Dangerous, and the utterly criminal use of extensions and plugs in various Cage efforts. The man's hair is often as memorable as the movie he's in.

That said, Cage's personal appearance is a matter for his stylist not a review of the quality of the film he is in. Of course, makeup and hair are departments on a film set. Awards are given for great designs in both fields. When you think about it; actresses are constantly judged by their looks in movies whether consciously or otherwise.

Why should Nic Cage be excused? Why should he have a separate standard? Just because he has chosen to look so utterly bizarre on screen I as a critic of film am supposed to pretend I don't notice? How is that at all fair? You know what? Modest apology rescinded. In Knowing, Nicholas Cage's unyieldingly bizarre hairline comes second to the bizarre plotting of director Alex Proyas in a biblio-scientific melodrama about the end of existence.

Knowing stars Nicholas Cage as an MIT professor whose son brings home a piece of paper that had been buried underground for 50 years. The long ago students at his son's primary school buried the time capsules filled with their visions of the future some 50 years ago. When it was opened and his son was given a particular drawing from the capsule, all it had on it was a series of numbers.

Bored and slightly drunk, Cage begins examining the numbers and thinks he sees a pattern. The number 091101 2388 happens to correspond to the date of the World Trade Center attack and the number of people who died that day. Further investigation finds that most of the numbers are also dated and the number dead in every tragedy for the past 50 years.

Worse yet are numbers that correspond to future dates including several in the near future. The idea of determinism vs randomness has been the professor's field for a very long time and his conflict is well founded until he begins trying to alter the future and finds nothing but futility. Rose Byrne plays the daughter of the woman who wrote the numbers 50 years earlier. She now has a daughter who, like her grandmother, is hearing strange voices and numbered warnings. Strangely, Cage's son is also hearing these warnings and eventually unconsciously scribbling numbered warnings.

Director Alex Proyas is a master of this kind of supernatural oddity. His Dark City and The Crow are underrated epics of the macabre and dangerous. Head trips into the souls of people whose souls are questionable at best. Unfortunately, with Knowing he has found his M. Night Shyamalan-The Happening moment.

Ok, Knowing isn't nearly the abomination that The Happening was, but in the context of the two filmmakers, the parallel of the visionary artist finding his absolute nadir, the comparison is apt. Proyas's commitment to the absolute oddity of tone and utter lack of interest in crafting a competent narrative perfectly mirrors Shyamalan's unbelievable commitment to his bizarre meta-environmental parable.

Knowing's milieu is the kind of end of the world prophecy that the religious right oriented Left Behind movies have cultivated for years. Except, replace god with aliens. Yes, ET is somehow woven into this plot along with theology, numerology, Cosmology and even cosmetology as once again Cage's follicles cry out for attention as they hold on for dear life at that place he wishes were his real hairline.

As goofball plots go, Knowing is a doozy of goofball elements from aliens to car chases to the end of the world to moments of family reunion hokum. Director Proyas throws a whole hell of a lot of stuff at the screen. Not much sticks. There is an almost joy in the film's heedlessness of convention and willingness to be so earnestly cheeseball. The appreciation fades however in the final hockey moments.

Knowing is a disaster for director Proyas and yet another bizarre signpost in the career of Nicholas Cage. Add Knowing to Bangkok Dangerous to Next to The Wicker Man and you actually begin to see a pattern of complete disregard for convention that makes Knowing seem perfectly logical for Cage, even as it is a disaster for director, co-stars, producers and subsequent audience.

Movie Review I, Robot

I, Robot (2004) 

Directed by Alex Proyas 

Written by Jeff Vintar, Akiva Goldsman

Starring Will Smith, Bridget Moynihan, Bruce Greenwood, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk 

Release Date July 16th, 2004

Published July 14th, 2004

Will Smith says he only has a few more years of running, jumping and shooting before he needs to find another niche. Let’s hope it’s more than a few years because he is one of that genre's most-welcome stars. Yes Bad Boys 2 stunk but his latest film I, Robot, makes up for that piece of trash with a smart stylish Sci-Fi action movie.

Smith stars as Detective Del Spooner, your average everyday Chicago Police Detective. Looking around his messy apartment and his old school casual clothes you would never guess he lives in the year 2035. That is until he steps out into the streets that teem with commuters and their walking, talking robot counterparts.

In 2035 robots will be an important part of everyday society, assisting in everyday activities such as cooking, cleaning and various menial jobs that humans would prefer not to do. This might sound good to most people but Del hates it and he hates robots. His prejudice stems from an accident that is hinted at in his dreams.

It is ironic then with Del’s dislike of robots that he would be the detective forced to investigate the apparent suicide of the top robot creator in the world, Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell). Spooner knows Dr. Lanning, how they know each other is explained later in the film, and Lanning has left him a holographic projection that may hold an important clue to something even bigger than his own suicide.

Spooner, ever suspicious of robots, chooses to investigate the case as murder. He is allowed into Dr. Lanning’s labs under the watchful eye of the company’s owner Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood) and Dr. Lanning’s assistant Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynihan). It’s preposterous of course that a robot could commit a murder because they are implanted with Dr. Lanning’s three laws of robotics (They are of course the creation of writer Isaac Asimov who wrote the short story “I , Robot” which is part of this film’s inspiration but not it’s direct source).

The three laws are:

1. A Robot may not harm a human being or through inaction allow a human being to be harmed.

2. A Robot must obey the orders of a human being unless those orders violate the first law.

3. A Robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not violate the first two laws.

Of course as Detective Spooner cleverly points out, rules are meant to be broken. Dr. Lanning must have agreed because prior to his death he created a robot he called Sonny (Voice by Alan Tudyk) who can think, feel and make choices that may allow it to reconsider the three laws. The Robots, especially Sonny, are some of the most spectacular examples of CGI that we have ever seen. Lifelike and eminently believable, the robots of I, Robot stand alongside Spider-man and the creatures of George Lucas as examples of what amazing things CGI can do

Director Alex Proyas may be the best director working in the science fiction genre today. If you haven’t seen his Dark City, finish reading this and run to the video store because that film is a must see masterpiece. I, Robot is not a masterpiece but as a genre piece and a Will Smith movie, it is spectacular.

Smith’s charisma continues to mature as he does as an actor. Smith is such a welcome reassuring presence that you can forgive a few screenplay contrivances that manipulate his character into particular situations. You can also forgive a few of those all-to-well-timed one-liners that occasionally feel out of place in this straight-faced film.

Many critics have complained that this film strays too far from Isaac Asimov’s brilliant short story written as part of his Robot Dreams collection. Indeed this is Asimov’s “I, Robot” in name only. This I, Robot is cynical about technology, robots specifically, where Asimov always played the robots as conflicted good guys that may have occasionally struggled with the three laws but protected humanity.

The script for this I, Robot written by Jeff Vintar and Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman has an almost Luddite view of technology. The script shows a fear of technology more in the vein of Osamu Rezuka’s Metropolis than Asimov, though both ask similar questions. Can robots think, feel, or love?

I, Robot, doesn't have the time to answer those questions. It’s a little too busy being an action movie, but it does have its thoughtful moments and the banter between Smith’s cop and Moynihan’s scientist does offer moments of good debate about the nature of humans and robots. The film is not exactly deep but it has more interesting ideas than most big summer blockbusters and for that we should cheer.