knowing (proyas, 2009)

This is more like it. Working with a tremendously retarded script and an anemic and badly wigged Nicolas Cage, Alex Proyas (Dark City, I, Robot, Garage Days) nevertheless maintains unfailing point, managing the proceedings with nimbleness and striking visuals. The relentlessly beset "auteur theory" is often misstated to mean a director has total creative control or, more tempting to believe, an insurgent filtering effect on for-hire projects - in this case, however, as with untold many throughout the history of corporate-subsidized cinema, Proyas is not inhibited by obeying the rulebook, and in fact maximizes the visceral impact of the spectacle (the train, the crash, the conclusion) and weaves into the narrative a series of visual compositions that are far better than we could possibly have expected.