Knowing

KNOWING is your basic action thriller/science fiction/horror film about the concepts of determinism versus the randomness of the universe. And, oh, yeah, the end of the world. Nicolas Cage plays an MIT professor who comes into possession of a paper covered with apparently random numbers that were written by a little girl and put into an elementary school time capsule fifty years earlier. He sees a pattern in the numbers, starts to decipher them, and soon realizes that they correspond to the dates of violent disasters that happened in the intervening fifty years. And there are still some dates and disasters to come . . .

This movie is of possible interest to mystery fans because it was written by Ryne Douglas Pearson, the author of several pretty good suspense novels featuring a team of FBI agents. And most of the way, KNOWING is a pretty good little film that explores issues mainstream films often don’t. But then, boy, does it do some serious falling apart in the end. Livia and I both wound up disappointed. It’s not a terrible film by any means, but I wouldn’t rush right out to pick up the DVD.