The movie “The Number 23,” directed by Joel Schumacher, is by no means your normal thriller. Though it appears to be a horror film from the trailer, it is a movie of twist and turns.

Jim Carrey stars as Walter Sparrow, a dog catcher, husband and father of one teenage son. From the very beginning he looks like a man who is about to commit suicide at any moment. Carrey, shying away from comedy in this role, also serves as the narrator in the movie, informing the audience from the beginning that the whole scenario could have been avoided if he was just “on time.”

Ironically enough, the movies starts with Sparrow sitting in his dog catcher van waiting on 5:00 p.m. It’s his birthday, and he has plans to meet his wife and friends for dinner.

Sparrow’s plans are delayed at 4:59 p.m. when he gets a call from his dispatcher asking him to go to China Town to deal with a vicious-looking dog. When he gets there, he tries to calm the animal down, but the dog bites him and escapes to a graveyard. He tranquilizes the dog and meets the owner who is annoyed with him for chasing the dog. This scene seems irrelevant at the beginning, but we learn later in the movie that the dog is actually key in the movie.

He finally meets up with his wife, Agatha, played by Virginia Madsen. Sparrow gets a book for his birthday called “The Number 23” from his wife as a joke. Soon Sparrow becomes deeply obsessed with the book and number. He finds just about every way to relate the number 23 to him, claiming that the book was written about him.

It seems at first that Sparrow is crazy because he imagines being the main character of the book, Detective Fingerling. As the unfinished book becomes more and more a part of Sparrow’s life, the movie takes more twists and turns. You may even become reminded of “The Da Vinci Code” because the meaning of “The Number 23” seems to be the most important. However, because the story is based on the book, it appears to be more than the number. It becomes about murder.

The story causes you to suspect everyone from Agatha to the dog who bites him and leads him to the graveyard.

This movie won’t have you jumping out of your seat, but it will have you wondering about numbers and their meanings. At the end of it I could not help but wonder: If the number 23 is depicted in the movie to be related to the triple sixes, what number is meant for good? Bottom Line: 3.5/5

Watch “The Number 23” Trailer

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