"knowing" The Future Holds Some Surprises

Weve seen Nicolas Cage decipher codes before, a la National Treasure. If theres one thing the Academy Award-winning actor is good at, its bringing an audience inside his mind and letting us see how it works. In the sci-fi thriller Knowing, Cage plays the role of John Koestler, an astrophysics professor at MIT, who we quickly learn is a grieving widower, conscientiously raising his son Caleb by day and drinking away his sorrows by night.

Caleb attends an elementary school that is celebrating their fiftieth anniversary by opening a time capsule buried on the grounds since 1959. In that year, the students had each put a picture theyd drawn of how they thought the future would look, into the capsule. One troubled little girl, Lucinda Embry, did not draw a picture, but instead, feverishly scribbled row after row of numbers till they filled an entire page. Caleb is the unenvied recipient of her entry, but when he inadvertently brings the specimen home, his dad late at night takes a closer look. In a move thats even speedy for an astrophysicist, he sees a pattern to the numbers, an intricate listing of dates, numbers of casualties, and GPS coordinates for every major disaster of the last fifty years.

Thoroughly intrigued, he sets aside the booze, logs on to research the writer of the codes, read news reports of the disasters, and unfortunately discovers that the last three have not yet happened but will within the next few days. What follows are Johns efforts to pretty much save the world, hampered by the fact that foretold events never happen in the way that one expects. He is assisted by Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), the daughter of the original code writer, and her daughter Abby (Lara Robinson, in the duel roles of Abby and Lucinda). Johns plight attains extra urgency when it becomes apparent that the expected disasters directly involve him and his son.

We are treated to plenty of harrowing action, a minor subplot about Johns troubled relationship with his pastor father and prying sister, and some Sixth Sense-like, I-see-dead-people moments from Chandler Canterbury as Caleb.

In an unexpected turn, there is a brief undercurrent of the science-vs.-religious faith concept addressed so much more powerfully in Carl Sagans Contact, along with a surreal ending mildly reminiscent of that film. Its not particularly memorable, but with impressive, fiery special effects, plenty of frightful momentsin the dark of nightin the woods, and backed by a soundtrack using passages from Beethoven and Gustav Holsts The Planets, it rises above the painfully mediocre.