I’m not immune to the shallow but immediate gratification Hollywood blockbusters can offer, but honestly, Knowing really tests the limits of even my hardened endurance and oddly perverse enjoyment of awful movies.

In fact, Knowing is so bad that I’m going to act as a spoiler: in this film, everybody on the planet dies. There you go, do you still want to see it?

I’m old enough to remember when Nicolas Cage could act. Hell, he was great in early films like ‘Birdy’ and incredible in David Lynch’s ‘Wild At Heart’ and quite a few others. What happened to this guy? His acting performances have been getting progressively worse with every movie, and in ‘Knowing’ he looks like he can hardly be bothered at all. It doesn’t help that he kind of looks like a walking skeleton with a shiny bald pate, but a decent actor can get over any physical impairment, really.

Basically, though, Hollywood offers up many big movies with fairly mundane acting performances. It doesn’t really matter when the special effects are doing most of the work, does it? ‘Knowing’ has a fascinating premise, and apocalyptic scenarios are inherently interesting, but all concerned really botch it with this one. Nothing holds together; the story, the characters, the interaction of the characters, what the characters end up doing. While a huge amount must have been spent on the special effects, they frequently look cheap and unrealistic.

Okay, ‘Knowing’ isn’t without its moments, but those moments are few and far between, and even the dialogue mix seemed out of kilter on the DVD I watched… the voices were curiously muffled.

Perhaps one day ‘Knowing’ will prove its worth as a “shining” example of how not to make a movie. There’s so much that simply isn’t right about this film that the viewer is frequently gobsmacked. GARY STEEL

Sound 2.5

Vision 2.5

Overall 1