Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Number 23 (2007)
October 7th 2008 01:05
Thriller movies involve a hook. They need something to get the audience interested and intrigued. “The Number 23” has a book. Its premise involves a man becoming utterly consumed with a book called The Number 23, relating it to everything in his life. Then he starts seeing the number everywhere throughout his life and spiralling down into a dark paranoia.
This film contains many conventions of the Thriller genre. First of all, there is the dark, paranoid voice-over. This sets up the feeling of the film. As it is the main character’s voice, Walter Sparrow (played by Jim Carrey), it gives the reading of the book a personal and haunting feel. Next there is the lighting, which is synonymous with thriller movies. It is dark and frightening. The final convention is the plot twist, which i won't go into. The main feature wall in their house being blood red is also an allusion to the horrible secret held by the book.
Walter Sparrow is a little bit eccentric, which ads to his appeal as a character, until he starts going insane with seeing the Number 23 everywhere. In spite of this, he is still a hard-boiled hero. While his job is as an animal control officer and not a detective, the life he invented for himself in the book is more of a loner detective, searching for something within himself. It is still a thriller but it has similarities to the hard-boiled crime genre.
Walter’s infatuation with the Number 23 stems from the book but leads him down a path of insanity and paranoia. He sees the number everywhere and his mind begins to play tricks on him, for example, when he sees a shadow with a knife stabbing his wife and a dream where he feared he had actually killed her in his sleep. This movie takes you through the mind of a man driven insane by a book.
Joel Schumacher, the director, has done well with this movie, taking us into the book itself and using special effects to show the Fingerling (the books main character) side of Walter Sparrow’s psyche. In his mind, part of Walter sees himself as a detective. So when the book talks of Fingerling, a detective by trade, he conveniently fills that void in the story. Fingerling plays the sax and has a sexual relationship around with a dark-haired femme fatale named Fabrizia.
“Maybe it's not the happiest of endings, but it's the right one.” This is a good ending to the film. It doesn’t need to be a good ending, just the right one. After seemingly going crazy trying to find an answer to the questions raised by the book, he works everything out in the end. While the resolution isn’t happy, it’s the ending that needed to be done.
While this movie was panned by critics, I found it to be a really good, absorbing film. I thought that Jim Carrey was outstanding and the script was good as well. I would highly recommend this film. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
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