Almost, but not yet, a complete waste of celluloid

Rating: 5/10 (25 February 2007)

A gal buys her guy a book to read. It's called "The Number 23" and it advertises itself as a trip into the heart of paranoia. The guy, not the reader type, starts reading it reluctantly and slowly. But the more he gets into it, the more parallels he finds between the book and his own life. Well, that's paranoia for you alright.
Storywise this film isn't too bad. It relies a bit on the ability to believe in numerology but not so much that it becomes completely unwatchable when you don't believe in such. The things that happen aren't too out of the possible, and with that it becomes a pretty much OK mind warping thriller film. I say pretty much OK because it fails to get out of the "thirteen in a dozen" range for the most of the time.
The actual build up of the film (acting, music etc) isn't half bad, it works well enough. It's just the story that is just a little too weak to carry it all, and with that it fails to be good enough to be considered worthy cinema material.
5 out of 10 paranoid people