The Number 23
So, thirty minutes into watching The Number 23 and I'm starting to get confused.
It's Joel F*** Schmaucher directing and it ain't half bad. I mean it ain't great, but he is doing an admirable job with the limited premise of the movie and is going at a steady enough pace, not rushing anything just yet.
However, I will say that if you are the type of person who believes in coincidences and doesn't care much for conspiracy theories and well you think 23 is just a random number... then I'm not sure the movie will be able to draw you into the madness that is plaguing Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey). Getting all worked up over a number for some will get very frustrating and very tedious early on... but I was fine with it up to a point.
It's no surprise really. I love Memento, Fight Club, The Machinist and every other dark mystery thriller you can think of that revolves around an obsessive character who tries to find "the truth" to his problem.
Sparrow's problem is that he has been given a book titled "The Number 23" from his wife Agatha (played by Virginia Madsen, in the thankless caring wife role) and he becomes obsessed by it. You see, the book reads off like his life (which we see Carrey play out in other worldly scenes) as the lead character Detective Fingerling, has a striking resemblance to his own past and current situation. Indeed, when he reads about the detective killing his wife, he starts to panic and think maybe it's his fate to do the same to her.
Is the book's author, the mysterious Topsy Kretts trying to tell everyone about the deeper meaning of The Number 23 or is it pure fiction? That's the question that needs to be answered as Walter digs deeper and deeper into an obsession over the number and as his book ends at Chapter 22....he is really starting to go insane.
At the beginning of the second act, the movie becomes very unsatisfying. We become less and less involved with Walter and instead just focused on the number. We aren't privileged enough to get inside Sparrow's head like we did for Trevor Reznick or Leonard from far superior character studies and he soon becomes an empty vessel for Schamucher to take us from the contrived "Point A to Point B" which we have seen a million times before.
The most positive thing I can say about the movie is Jim Carrey. This dude is an extremely under-rated dramatic actor, and he pulls off two fantastic roles here. He is perfect as the mild manned "dog-catching" Walter Sparrow (which in the first act is quite a nice touch for Ace Ventura fans) but where he truly shines is his role as the super cool Frank Miller trench coat wearing detective, in this stylish parallel universe straight out of Sin City.
In fact, that was the movie I wanted to see. Those scenes with Detective Fingerling were awesome, a dark and gritty universe where people talk cliches and rattle off hyper-real sexy dialogue, almost with a smirk on their face. It was trashy but oh so cool....everything I hoped The Black Dahlia would be, but sadly they were only short lived.
The third act is an absolute joke, it will no doubt be the worst reel of cinema I ever have to endure in 2007. The whole act is explanation. It's the script writer and Schmaucher just telling us everything that they did such a shitty job at hinting at earlier in the film. They are telling us what we should have been able to work out for ourselves.
Let us watch Jim Carrey find out what this big secret is for himself, don't tell him or us for that matter! Where is the fun in that? Where is the mystery that you were promoting? It's ever so lazy from the talent involved, who probably got as bored as I did with the fucking Number 23.
rating:1.5
Well yet again I'm disappointed with a Joel F**** Schmaucher film. The real mystery of The Number 23 is trying to work out what the hell he was attempting to do with this film. Is it a mystery, a suspense story, a horror movie, a psychological thriller, a film noir? Whilst not Schamucher's worst film, I would certainly say it was his most confused.