Alex Proyas (director) / Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White, Stuart Hazeldine, Alex Proyas (screenplay)
CAST: Nicolas Cage … John Koestler
Chandler Canterbury … Caleb Koestler
Rose Byrne … Diana Wayland
D.G. Maloney … The Stranger
Lara Robinson … Lucinda Embry / Abby Wayland
Nadia Townsend … Grace Koestler
Alan Hopgood … Rev. Koestler

In a lot of ways, “Knowing” exceeded my expectations. I went into it expecting a CGI-filled disaster movie with explosions every few second, but instead got a terrifically paced suspense-thriller with well-drawn characters. Proyas continues to impress with his visual acumen, and certainly the airplane crash and its raw, immediate aftermath is one of “Knowing’s” highlights. The film is a bit of a slow-mover at the beginning, but it does pick up steam and builds toward an unpredictable Third Act, before settling into a curiously muted conclusion. You expect a movie about the end of the world to go out with a bang, but “Knowing” and Alex Proyas have other ideas.

View watchmen trailer from Watchmen Official Trailer

Watchmen is set in an America in which Richard Nixon is serving an unprecedented third term as president after winning Vietnam with the help of Dr Manhattan, the comic book's only true superhero, and the Comedian, a nihilistic, heartless bully and would-be rapist who represents everything wrong with the bad ol' US of A. The pair are the only remaining "costumed adventurers" permitted to operate after the activity was made illegal five years earlier. But the sudden murder of the Comedian starts off a chain of events which will pull many of the surviving former heroes back into the fray, for better or worse.

The background to all this is imminent nuclear apocalypse, with the famed Doomsday Clock fixed at five minutes to midnight. Billions of people wait to see whether Manhattan will intervene to halt the standoff between Nixon and the Soviets. And where might be the cerulean superman? Well, he's in self-imposed exile on Mars.