The premise was intriguing...

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2007)

...and the execution was stylish, but even on second viewing, Joel "Phone Booth" Schumacher's psychological thriller, "The Number 23" didn't quite live up to its numerological promise. The script by newcomer Fernley Phillips mines the rich field of mystic numerology to set up an interesting mystery, but everything falls apart in a mundane third act wrap-up that negates everything that has come before, and leaves the audience scratching its collective head at the raft of "oh, c'mons" and "now hold on a seconds" with which Phillips & Schumacher leave them.
Make no mistake, I really wanted to love this movie. I was a Robert Anton Wilson fan back in the day--the Illuminati trilogy, "Principia Discordia," the Church of the SubGenius, and all that other tongue-in-cheek hokum. I even had a casual "obsession" with the number 23, though nothing like that of Walter Sparrow, the protagonist of this movie, played by Jim "I Am Not Just a Comedian" Carey. Phillips' screenplay, though, clever as it is, just doesn't add up to much more than an overly spelled-out twist finale, very disappointing not only because of its relative mundanity, but because of its illogic.
Still, the art direction, production design and so forth are all well done, very noir-ish in the "fiction" scenes. Matthew "Phone Booth" Libatique's camera wrangling is excellent, as is Harry "Flushed Away" Gregson-Williams' music. The acting is decent, though I think Carey was not the best casting choice; his rubberface comedic persona seemed to be lurking just beneath the surface of what he was doing, and buying him as a sleazy detective (even a fictional one) with a hinky-dink for BDSM is quite a stretch. I have every respect for Carey as a dramatic actor (cf. "Man on the Moon" and "The Majestic" and even "The Truman Show"), but the role simply called for someone with a bit more gravitas. Virgina "Sideways" Madsen (whose 40th birthday was 9.11.2001---ooooh, spooky!) does fine as the wife, Logan "3:10 to Yuma" Lerman is serviceable as the son, Danny "30 Days of Night" Huston does the shrink thing, and the woefully under-appreciated character actor Mark "Mulholland Drive" Pellegrino has a superb scene as the man at the apparent center of Sparrows' obsession. Also watch for a brief appearance by the great Ed "Seabiscuit" Lauter, another great and mostly unlauded character actor. Oh, yes, Rhona "Skinwalkers" Mitra is more than appealing as the sex object, even moreso in the unrated DVD director's cut.
Ultimately, it's the collapse of logic that relegates "The Number 23" to the status of "just another movie, could have been great, but..." I'll not spoil anything for anyone reading this who might not have seen it yet, but suffice to say, you're going to finish up your filmwatching experience saying, "Hey, wait a minute! That doesn't add up..."