The Number 23
| The Number 23 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Joel Schumacher |
| Written by | Fernley Phillips |
| Produced by | Beau Flynn Fernley Phillips Tripp Vinson |
| Starring | Jim Carrey Virginia Madsen Logan Lerman Danny Huston Mark Pellegrino Lynn Collins Rhona Mitra Bud Cort |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
Release dates |  February 23, 2007 February 23, 2007 March 8, 2007 March 22, 2007 April 13, 2007 April 25, 2007 |
Running time | Netherlands: 98 min (theatrical version) / USA: 95 min |
| Language | English |
The Number 23 is a suspense film starring Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, and Danny Huston, directed by Joel Schumacher. It was released on February 23 2007 and was released on DVD on July 24 2007 (July 23rd in the UK). The plot involves an obsession with the 23 Enigma, an esoteric belief that all incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23, some permutation of the number 23, or a number related to the number 23. Although the 23 Enigma is pervasive in the works of author Robert Anton Wilson, including the 1998 film 23, he is not acknowledged in the credits for this film,[1] which is not a remake of 23.[2] This film is the second one with Schumacher and Carrey, the first being Batman Forever. The Number 23 is director Joel Schumacher’s 23rd TV-film project.
Plot
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Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is an animal control officer married to cake shop owner, Agatha (Virginia Madsen); they have a son, Robin (Logan Lerman). The film opens with Walter narrating the events of his recent birthday. He begins by describing how, when it was almost five o'clock, he received a call to catch a dog. The dog had been cornered in the basement of a Chinese restaurant, and gave chase when Walter approached. Walter eventually cornered the dog, and noticed on its collar tag that its name was Ned.
Because of the run-in with the dog, Walter is late meeting his wife and while she is waiting, she enters a bookstore called "A Novel Fate". In the store, she leafs through a book titled "The number 23" written by Topsy Kretts. When Walter finally arrives, Agatha announces that she is going to buy the book for him, as it is his birthday.
Once home, Walter starts reading the book, finding what he takes to be odd similarities between himself and the main character, a detective only known as "Fingerling". The main character in the paperback explains that he got the name Fingerling from an obscure children's book, one that to Walter's surprise he had also owned and enjoyed as a child. Also of note, the book details Fingerling's meeting with the "Suicide Blonde" whose obsession with the number 23 drives her to murder her boyfriend and commit suicide. In the novel, her explanations and calculations of almost everything — including names, birth dates, and colors — all adding up to 23, drive her insane. Through scenes that resemble hazy flashbacks we learn that these calculations are scribbled all over her apartment walls. Incidentally, her apartment is opposite apartment number 959 which adds up to 23.
The film builds suspense because Walter seems to be "seeing" the events as depicted in the book, such as the murder-suicide, and the usual plot devices are not used (e.g., a dream sequence). Tension is thus created by a story-within-a-story arrangement. We do not simply follow Walter; rather, we follow Walter as he is drawn deeper and deeper into an already confused novel. The growing obsession that Walter has with that novel becomes apparent when he tells his wife and son about the "23" phenomenon that the book seems to be based on (only to have the wife dismiss his worries). Walter shows them his own calculations, done on their dining room walls, in which his name, house number and social security number all add up to 23. These calculations are, again, oddly similar to those that Fingerling carries out. Walter visits Dr. Isaac French (Danny Huston), a friend of Agatha's, whom he hopes will explain the 23 theory.
Walter takes the book back to the bookstore and learns it was self-published and self-printed, and that, according to the apathetic store clerk, the author, Topsy Kretts, never released any other books.
As Walter is drawn ever deeper into Fingerling's story, he begins to suspect that Dr. French has romantic designs on Agatha, in parallel with events in the book. Walter begins to think anything associated with the number 23 is cursed or evil because 2 divided by 3 equals 0.6 recurring ( .666: Number of the Beast), as Dr. French explained.
Walter's continued paranoia causes him to have dreams of killing Agatha, again in parallel with the book. After one such vivid dream he drives off in the middle of the night, leaving a note saying that he has to clear his head. Walter winds up in King Edward Hotel, which was built in 1923, and requests room 23.
Walter spends the evening finishing the book only to discover that the book stops on chapter 22 with Fingerling on a balcony trying to decide whether or not to jump, after murdering his lover, Fabrizia.
Walter sees Ned again and follows him to the grave of Laura Tollins (Rhona Mitra) who died on her 23rd birthday; her body was never found. Walter looks into her death and discovers Laura was sleeping with her professor, somewhat like Fabrizia in the book. Walter thinks the professor wrote the book as a confession and goes to see him in jail, yet the visit yields nothing. The man proclaims his innocence of the murder and of being the author, and suggests that "[Walter's] problems are bigger than [his]." Furthermore, the man says that if he were really to write a book, he would not use a (pseudonym) like "Top Secrets": what Topsy Kretts sounds like.
Robin finds a P.O. Box address hidden in the back of the book and they send 23 boxes filled with packing peanuts to it, hoping to draw out the book's author. They wait for Topsy Kretts, who, upon being confronted by Walter, becomes panicked, proclaims Walter should be dead and slits his own throat. Inside the man's pockets, Agatha finds an ID card belonging to a mental institution, showing that the man is Dr. Sirius Leary (which, like "Topsy Kretts", can be read as "Seriously") and tells Walter nothing of it. She goes to the abandoned institute and finds Leary's old office. In a cell covered in calculations of the number 23, she finds an old box with what appears to be Walter's name on it and the case number 85307.
Meanwhile, Robin and Walter, who have been examining the book, discover that every 23rd word on every 23rd page spells out two messages, the first one being, "Visit Casanova Spark; dig beneath the steps to heaven." The other message being "I warn you, Hell is waiting Sparrow-man." Robin asks who "Casanova Spark" is, to which Walter mysteriously replies, "It's not a person."
They arrive at "Casanova's Park" late that night, and going down the staircase marked "The Steps to Heaven," they realize that there are 23 of them. At the bottom, they dig deep in the ground and discover the remains of a human skeleton, presumably Laura Tollins', but when they return with a police officer, the bones have disappeared. Agatha arrives with Dr. French, only raising Walter's hackles more, and they return home. On the way, they encounter Ned sitting in the road. Walter accelerates, intending to kill him, but stops at the last second when Agatha grabs his arm, her fingers stained with dirt.
As Agatha washes her dirt-stained hands at their home, Walter confronts her about taking the bones and accuses her of writing the book. She admits to moving the skeleton to protect him and tells Walter that, in fact, it was he who wrote the book, and shows him the contents of the box from the Institute. In the box there are detective comics, the manuscript of "The Number 23" with Walter's name on it and a saxophone, the instrument Fingerling played in the book. Walter leaves in disbelief.
He returns to the hotel room where he tears down the wallpaper and finds almost everything possible that adds up to 23 written all over the walls as well as chapter 23 of the book, identifying himself as the author, declaring it his confession and explaining everything; Walter begins to remember why he did everything: his father killed himself after Walter's mother's death. His suicide note was just pages of things that added up to the number 23. Walter loved Laura Tollins, a woman he went to college with, and grew obsessed with 23 because of his father. Laura eventually began sleeping with her professor and when Walter confronted her about this, declared that she never loved him. He went into a rage, stabbing her and burying her in the park. Ned observed him burying Laura. Like the character in the book, the professor was the first to walk into the room where Laura was killed, and he picked up the knife, covering the weapon with his fingerprints, and staining his hands with blood. With this, he was subsequently arrested for the murder. Walter then went into the hotel room, wrote the book, everything that adds to 23 on the walls, floor and every other part of the room, and then jumped off the balcony. He survived but suffered severe injuries and trauma, which required intense therapy. Walter then ended up in the institute where Dr. Leary worked. Dr. Leary read the manuscript and, after publishing it, becomes obsessed with the number 23 himself. Because of the fall, Walter suffered memory loss, forgetting that he killed Laura and upon leaving the institute he met Agatha.
Walter now turns himself in, thereby freeing the professor and finally relieving his conscience. Laura Tollins' body is finally interred at the cemetery, at rest, and her professor is set free. Ned the dog is present at the funeral, and it is interesting to note that earlier the priest mentioned his nickname, "guardian of the dead." According to Walter's lawyer, the judge may lighten his sentence in view of the fact that Walter turned himself in. Though entering prison, Walter Sparrow seems optimistic about himself and his family's future, having taught his son about "justice."
At the end of the movie you see the Bible reading from Numbers 32:23 "Be sure that your sins will find you out."
Cast
- Jim Carrey as Walter Sparrow / Det. Fingerling
- Virginia Madsen as Agatha Pink-Sparrow / Fabrizia
- Logan Lerman as Robin Sparrow
- Chris Lajoie as Benton
- Danny Huston as Isaac French / Dr. Miles Phoenix
- Rhona Mitra as Laura Tollins
- Mark Pellegrino as Kyle Finch
- Paul Butcher as Young Walter Sparrow / Young Fingerling
- Lynn Collins as Isobel Lydia Hunt aka The Suicide Blonde
- Bud Cort as Dr. Leary
- Tom Lenk as Bookstore Clerk
- Bob Zmuda as Desk Clerk
Reception
The film has received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, with an average rating of 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.[3] Of the few critics who liked the film, Richard Roeper and critic George Pennachio of KABC-TV in Los Angeles stand out, as they gave the film a "two thumbs up" rating on the television show Ebert & Roeper (Pennachio was standing in for Roger Ebert due to Ebert's recent illness). [4]
DVD release
The film was released on Region 1 DVD on July 24, 2007. It includes deleted scenes, such as a much more abstract alternate opening somewhat redolent of the opening of The Double Life of Véronique, and an alternate ending that gives a few more details about Walter's prison sentence and hints at the possibility that the son could be subject to the same obsessions as his father. The disc also includes interviews with mathematicians, psychologists and numerologists. The DVD shows the film over a set of 23 chapters. As of August 26, 2007 The Number 23 has generated $24.62 million from DVD rental gross.
See also
References
- ^ Richard Horgan. "Jim Carrey's Cosmic Trigger".
- ^ Peg Aloi. "The number 23:A zero".
- ^ The Number 23, rottentomatoes.com, accessed March 25, 2007.
- ^ Ebert & Roeper, air date February 24, 2007.