Los Angeles Times
"[A] moody and sometimes ideologically provocative film....Director Alex Proyas has long been drawn to otherness. He's definitely mucking around in that and more here, with KNOWING his most overtly allegorical film yet." 03/20/2009Chicago Sun-Times
4 stars out of 4 -- "[F]rightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome....With expert and confident storytelling, Proyas strings together events that keep tension at a high pitch all through the film." 03/18/2009 Variety
"[KNOWING] has more on its mind than the run-of-the-mill effects-driven extravaganza. Absorbing....Canterbury and Robinson are rock-solid as the two crucial kids." 03/19/2009 Entertainment Weekly
"[D]irector Alex Proyas sprinkles in just enough CLOSE ENCOUNTERS sci-fi weirdness to keep things interesting..." -- Grade: B 07/17/2009 ReelViews 6 of 10
Knowing is a classic case of a movie that is crammed with interesting ideas but is unable to conceptualize them in a compelling fashion. Knowing doesn't fail because of a lack of ambition or scope but because of flaws in execution. The movie tries to accomplish a lot of things, but it doesn't do many of them well. The structure is confused, with a setup that is long and uninvolving, a middle section that is largely unnecessary, and an ending that is rushed. There are numerous red herrings; in fact, the first 90 minutes could be classified as such. The allegorical conclusion is also disappointing, mainly because it is anticlimactic. As cinematic failures go, at least this one is interesting in some aspects, but not to the degree that I can recommend it...For a while, Knowing touches on some interesting ideas, including questions about fate, chance, and predestination. There's also the concept of numbers forming the ultimate, underlying foundation of the universe - a belief that is shared by some mathematicians and mystics alike. Unfortunately, although the screenplay spends an inordinate amount of time with numerology and questions of whether the future can be known or predicted, these elements don't have a lot to do with the narrative's final trajectory...Because it's not a run-of-the-mill dumb disaster movie, Knowing proves to be more frustrating than simplistic fare like Independence Day or Armageddon. There is potential here for something thought-provoking, viscerally exciting, and ultimately transcendent. But there are too many problems with the script for Proyas to develop things to the point where we can see more than the skeleton of a missed opportunity. Science fiction fans will feel gypped, disaster movie fans will appreciate about 10 minutes of screen time and be bored by the rest, and no one else will care. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
"Knowing" is among the best science-fiction films I've seen -- frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome. In its very different way, it is comparable to the great "Dark City," by the same director, Alex Proyas. That film was about the hidden nature of the world men think they inhabit, and so is this one...The plot involves the most fundamental of all philosophical debates: Is the universe deterministic or random? Is everything in some way preordained or does it happen by chance? If that questions sounds too abstract, wait until you see this film, which poses it in stark terms: What if we could know in advance when the Earth will end?...Nicolas Cage, in another wound-up, edgy performance, plays John Koestler, a professor of astrophysics at MIT. He votes for deterministic; as he tells his class, he believes "s*** happens." His wife has died, and he's raising his young son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury). A time capsule is opened at Caleb's school, containing the drawings of students in 1959 predicting the sights of 2009. But the sheet Caleb gets isn't a drawing; it's covered with rows of numbers. In a prologue, we've seen the girl with haunted eyes, Lucinda (Lara Robinson), who so intensely pressed the numbers into the paper...The film is beautifully photographed by Simon Duggan, the Marco Beltrami score hammers or elevates when it needs to, and Richard Learoyd's editing is knife-edged; when he needs to hurtle us through sequences, he does it with an insistence that doesn't feel rushed...You may have guessed from the TV ads that something very bad is unfolding for planet Earth, and you may ask, not unreasonably, how these two nice parents and their lovable kids can possibly have any effect on it. Ah, but that would be in a random universe, and "Knowing" argues that the universe is deterministic. Or does it? Your papers will be due before class on Monday. - Roger Ebert
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