by Tamara Brown

Created on: March 02, 2009   Last Updated: March 11, 2009

Ever wish you could know the future? Maybe you could prevent mistakes before they happen, or disasters before they take place. What if you could know the future, but couldn't change anything about it? Do you still want to know? Nicholas Cage stars in "Knowing," his second film about the consequences of knowing the future. The tagline to the movie reads "Knowing is everything." However, when reading the synopsis of the movie, is seems like a better tagline would be "knowing is just the beginning."

The premise seems intriguing. Caleb Koestler's elementary class has just opened a time capsule from the past. Fifty years ago, children at his school drew pictures to predict what life would be like in the future and buried them for future kids to discover. Caleb is given one of these pictures as a subject of a class assignment. However, the one he gets isn't a picture at all. It is a list of random numbers. The story begins when he shows the list to his Dad, John Kestler played by Cage. John is a professor who teaches his classes that the universe is completely random. However, when he studies the numbers he sees that they aren't random. These numbers, buried fifty years ago, accurately predicted every major world catastrophe with the location, the date and even the number of casualties. Eventually, he realizes that there are still a few dates left to come, and it seems that he and his son are connected to it in some way.

As is typical in these types of films, John can't get the powers that be to believe the predictions. So it is up to him to find a way to prevent the disasters from taking place. Along the way he gets the unwilling help of the daughter and granddaughter of the prophecy writer. Will knowing about these tragedies ahead of time be enough to be able to stop the destruction in time, or will he unwittingly cause them to happen? Trailers promise a fast paced ride, and hint at a mystery yet to unfold with shady figures lurking in the background of several scenes.

In 2004, director Alex Proyas delivered I Robot with high numbers at the box office. Movie watchers are wondering if he can do it again with his sophomore attempt at a Hollywood film, despite the much smaller budget. The cast looks promising, led by Academy award winning Nicholas Cage, whose signature glower and haggard expression should be put to good use as he races to avert tragedy. Newcomer Chandler Canterbury, who made a splash in last year's Benjamin Button, also looks to prove his talent playing Cage's son.

"Knowing" will be released on March 20, 2009 and is rated PG-13. See a trailer of the movie here.

Sources: www.imdb.com and http://knowing-themovie.com/

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