Alex Proyas - a director who has always provided me with movies that were at least interesting. To me, anyway. He has also given me quite a few that I loved (Dark City and The Crow would be my top picks). So it was heartening to hear the praise that was heaped on Knowing when it was released, with some even going so far as to call it perhaps the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. But let's be clear just now and sweep away some of the hyperbole, it's not the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. It's not even the greatest movie of the last few years. What it IS is a great film that, as is all-too-rare nowadays, manages to mix visceral thrills and big bangs with intelligence and some moments of quality drama. It runs the gamut from mild chuckles to jump scares, from personal connections between characters to eye-searingly impressive disaster sequences. And it does it all quite brilliantly.<br /><br />Things kick off with an intriguing prologue. An elementary school burying a time capsule that features drawings from all of the children in class and a page of numbers from young Lucinda, who came up with the idea in the first place. Moving forward fifty years, the capsule is opened and the children of today each get to see what their forerunners imagined the future to be. Young Caleb Koestler (a fine performance from Chandler Canterbury even if his name does sound like a quaint old world English town) receives the page of numbers and begins to hear whispering voices. He shows the numbers to his father, astrophysicist and widower John Koestler (played by Nicolas Cage), and it's here that things get interesting. After he stumbles upon that most memorable of dates when the twin towers were brought down he finds that beside that date is written the number of people who died. Some frantic googling soon shows up most of the other numbers as dates and bodycounts . . . . . although some have yet to happen, including something very, very big. It is up to the Cage, along with Rose Byrne (playing the "prophet's" daughter struggling to keep her own young daughter safe), to decipher the code and hopefully save lives. Meanwhile, the whispering grows more insistent but only to the children.<br /><br />A cracking, and often thought-provoking, plot is moved forward by characters that you really care about. Of course, there are many people who dislike Cage's tics and twitches but he is both enjoyable and believable in the lead role. All of the child actors, rather surprisingly, do very well too and Rose Byrne proves to be a good partner for Cage, alternately hindering developments with a refusal to believe events and helping out with the odd comment/input that clarifies things further for Cage.<br /><br />Despite all of the intelligence and ideas woven throughout this movie it IS an event film and, impressively, the film doesn't disappoint here either. The big scenes are BIG and they really pin you back in your seat with some top-quality FX work and design.<br /><br />In fact, it's hard to find too many flaws in this film but I must say that I was wanting things to wrap up a little quicker in the final half hour, already sensing how things would pan out and feeling one step ahead of the protagonists. I was also left a little cold by the sci-fi trappings that were inserted near the very end of the movie, feeling almost disappointed and wishing there had been some other, equally mysterious and impressive, way to resolve things.<br /><br />But that was me, to others it may be the one and only ending they were hoping for so don't be put off. Even if you don't like those last scenes, the 90 minutes running up to them are brilliantly entertaining.<br /><br />See this if you like: The Medusa Touch, The Day After Tomorrow, Terminator 3 - Rise Of The Machines.