Nummer 23

I can't say that either Jim Carrey or Joel Schumacher have done anything impressive lately, but they do an okay job here. The number 23 is strangely entertaining. With its moody tone, its claustrophobic and haunting photography, its convoluted storytelling, and a lot of walls defaced with black ink, the movie frequently resembles John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. This one is not quite as creative, and even though it occasionally gets clumsy, the film is fairly intriguing and might be worth checking out if you like scary thrillers.

Jim Carrey is Walter Sparrow, a mild mannered dog catcher who has a nice family and a dull life. On Chrismas week, his wife buys him a strange memoir entitled 'The number 23'. Sparrow is a little sceptic at first, but once he starts to read he quickly gains interest, and is surprised to discover that the story has remarkable resemblance to his own life. One aspect in particular has gotten his attention. Sparrow starts to notice the number 23 itself appear everywhere, in dates, names, times... It gets him quite excited. Soon however, this hysteria will take him down a dark road as he seeks to find out the truth about what is really going on. What does the number mean? who wrote the novel? and what does it have to do with him?

The funny thing about the movie, is that the whole 23 concept ends up being kind of eluding and irrelevant. It feels like little more than a plot element to throw the viewer off track so we cannot figure out the movie before it is ready to give us the climactic twist. Depending on how focused you are on the picture, it may or may not work. The ending is strangely predicable in a way, although not too blatantly.

I can't say much for the acting (esspecially Carrey) but the cinematography and music are quite eccentric. There are times when the Number 23 feels like a cross between a Jazzy scored film-noir and a comic book.

I guess in the end, the movie could use a little work, but of course nothing is perfect. Try it and see what it does for you. It's not 2 bad3 .

It's interesting to see Jim Carrey in such a role, I think he did a good job. When I watched it for the first time, I was a teenager and I was amazed, it's not a "wow" movie but I think you will enjoy watching it.

Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is a family-man married with Agatha Sparrow (Virginia Madsen), and works catching dogs in the Department of Animal Control and has a teenager son very close to his wife and him. On the day of his birthday, he is bitten by a dog and comes late to meet Agatha. While waiting for him, Agatha buys a detective book with a novel about the mystery around the number 23 in a bookstore as a gift to Walther. He becomes captivated with the story and obsessed with the number 23, finding many coincidences with his own life, and he decides to find the author, believing the story is about him. His further investigation discloses a mysterious situation that makes Walther paranoid.

The dark "The Number 23" is a great tale of obsession, paranoid and redemption. The story and the characters are very well developed, the final twist is totally unexpected and the film has a stylish cinematography and edition, with intense use of dark colors. There are stunning sequences, like for example when the boy meets the widow dead on her bed, or the meeting of Fingerling with Suicide Blonde. Jim Carrey is perfect and Virginia Madsen is still a very beautiful and sexy woman and has a great performance. In spite of having a moralist conclusion, it works and leaves a magnificent message of justice and moral standards that are almost forgotten in the present days. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Número 23" ("Number 23")

I remember when this film came out in 2007 but for some reason I didn't see it at the time, then i stumbled across it many years later in a cheap dvd store so grabbed it, I like Jim Carrey as a comic actor but as this was billed as a horror i was intrigued to see how he'd fare in this.

Carrey stars as Walter Sparrow, a rather goofy, likeable animal control officer, and when he is bitten by a dog called Ned (which Sparrow comically refers to as nasty evil dog) it caused him to be late while meeting his wife in a bookstore, she then advises him to read a fairly old, scrappy looking book called "The Number 23", by Topsy Krets, so he does and is soon enthralled by the book, noting similarities between his own life, including the name/nickname of the books main character, "Fingerling".

The more Walter reads of the story he comes across a character called "the suicide blonde", who explains that the number 23 is cursed and appears everywhere around her, as he reads this, Walter too becomes obsessed with the number, as well as the main character, who he is convinced is somehow about him, his wife dismisses the idea but his son seems to agree with him and Walter is determined to find out more as well as track down the elusive Topsy Kretts, who it seems has no other body of work except for the novel Walter is reading, and a clerk at a bookstore, finds no information on Kretts.

As the story unfolds, it appears there is more to the whole story than meets the eye, as dark turns and twists occur, and we get an insight into Walters past, and just why he thinks the novel is somehow based on his life.

The film for me definitely lost a bit of steam as it went on, the constant flashes of Walter, as fingerling interacting with characters in the book became somewhat distracting after a while, and the more you learned about 23 it kind of took away the mystery, however the film was enjoyable in parts, and I did enjoy Carreys performance, even though I kept thinking he'd go full on rubberface mode (he didn't), it bought some humour into a somewhat bleak story.

Overall this film wasn't that good, but it was decent and I did thoroughly enjoy the first half hour or so, and I don't regret watching it I wouldn't go too far out of my way to endorse either.

6/10 Very mild recommendation.

I knew when I bought THE NUMBER 23 on DVD that I haven't to expect too much after reading the critics on this link. I watched it with high attention till the end and I have to say that it worked on a fair level as an average thriller. There are some points in this film that weren't logic for me. Anyway, if you have really nothing to do this one offers many mysteries and puzzles to solve but not great suspense. There were perhaps some unnecessary bloody scenes. I was very positive surprised seeing Jim Carrey giving a great and respectable performance in a thriller. I cannot share some opinions that he was misplaced here because he has no doubt a great talent and I can imagine him in other roles of this genre. And director Joel Schuhmacher made finally a better movie than his last ones. Final number: 6/10.