Knowing comes dangerously close to being one of the most potent and effective sci-fi thrillers to come along in a while… If only they hadn’t of cast Nicolas Cage to play a downtrodden physics professor that discovers a magic formula that reveals the date of the end of the world. Yes, ol’ Nic Cage came dangerously close to killing all the emotion, tension and atmosphere out of a film that’s utterly dependent on that stuff, and it’s a tribute to the skill of director Alex Proyas that he’s able to keep it together. Knowing is filled with a lot of interesting scenes, but Cage… Yes, Cage. You ruiner.

It seemed like such a simple assignment. The role is John Koestler, a physics prof who’s a widower trying to raise his young son on his own, while clearly still being in mourning over the death of his wife. For the most part Cage does morose well, there were just a few key scenes where a subtler type of emotion was required, or it was a moment fraught with tension or concern. Then Cage would have a line reading, or a bit of body language, that would just illicit an unintentional chuckle and the moment was gone. With another actor in play, or if Cage wasn’t carrying all the camp baggage, I’m more or less sure that things would have been better.

The basic story works if you’re one of those conspiracy buffs who think that somewhere, somebody has seen it all coming and for some reason (probably government related) hasn’t told anyone. Cage’s son, played by the quietly creepy Chandler Canterbury, pulls a sheet filled with numbers out of the pile of papers buried in a school time capsule from 1959. Somehow, Koestler manages to put the pieces together pretty quick and discovers that the numbers are the date, location and number of deaths of every global disaster since 1959 up to an event a few days hence ending with an ominous, backwards “EE.”

Putting aside the fact that disaster events seems to come rather fast and furiously after the discovery of the list, Knowing works on a level somewhere between concept and execution. It’s paced good, and I like the growing menace and the way Proyas pushes the confusion and the mystery so that not all is laid out as intended. Plus, as I previously stated in my New York Comic Con coverage, the two main action sequences are exquisite. The plane crash and subway crash scenes are brilliant, just really visceral and beautifully horrific. If there’s a saving grace that keeps this form being a complete failure, it’s these sequences.

But no matter how much is done to make the film cool, I feel that the end is one of the biggest letdowns I can remember in recent film. I don’t want to spoil it, but obviously the thing’s not entirely nihilistic. Now, that’s fine, I’m not about nihilism – I from a place called hope, though not literally – but let’s just say that the finale pulls a bit of a dues ex machina from the little seen area of a studio runner’s backside. Actually, I can’t say that for certain, but I was thinking of Dark City, while watching it, and not in a good way, because of similar studio interference it suffered. But between Cage and ending, I left the theatre utterly disappointed. The thing I know about Knowing is that it was just good enough to be better.