Profoundly Unnerving

Rating: 9/10 (29 January 2008)

I was immediately interested in the basic plot of this movie; a man who is obsessed with the number 23 because it is somehow connected to every part of his life. I had no idea what I was going into when I started watching it, but I wasn't expecting much. The commercials I'd seen for it seemed typical of the generic mystery-thriller that are a dime a dozen these days. I'm not too proud to admit I was absolutely, 100% wrong.
This film has taken quite a bit of heat for being "predictable", but even if you DO end up guessing how it will end and dismissing it as predictable, I think you simply can't think outside the box. One of the things I realized in retrospect after watching this film was that throughout it, I didn't care how it would end. I didn't think about it. The storytelling, superb performances, and the general setup that was established within the first 20 minutes was so real and engrossing that I actually felt like I was a part of the story rather than a casual observer. It draws you in and makes you a part of the dark, grimy world of Walter Sparrow. This is not a film anyone should sit through if they are shallow enough to only care about the ending. The thing that makes this a great piece of film is that throughout it, you KNOW that something isn't quite right with Walter Sparrow. You can see that from the very first scene in the movie, so clearly the writer had never intended the ending to come as a big shock. I think they succeeded perfectly in making a movie where you breathe the character's breath, walk in their footsteps, and feel their frustration. THAT is what makes The Number 23 so heart-stopping and suspenseful. You don't watch it from the comfort of your living room...you watch it from the eyes of a paranoid, obsessed, unhinged man whose life is spiraling out of control. THAT is what makes this movie brilliant. Anyone who criticizes this film for being predictable is just not able to grasp that there really is something much deeper going on then just two hours of action and a cookie-cutter ending. The writer of the film obviously intended to do something original and he pulled it off flawlessly.