The Number 23

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For the actual number, see 23 (number).

For another movie by a similar name, see 23 (film).

The Number 23

Directed by	Joel Schumacher
Produced by	Beau Flynn Fernley Phillips Tripp Vinson
Written by	Fernley Phillips
Starring	Jim Carrey Virginia Madsen Logan Lerman Danny Huston Mark Pellegrino Lynn Collins Rhona Mitra Bud Cort
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	February 23, 2007 February 23, 2007 March 8, 2007 March 22, 2007
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

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. The plot involves an obsession with the 23 Enigma, the Discordian 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.

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 Trivia
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is an animal control officer married to cake shop owner, Agatha (Virginia Madsen); they have a son, Robin (Logan Lerman).

It's almost five o'clock when Walter gets a call to catch a dog. He catches the dog and notices on the tag its name is Ned, but then gets distracted and the dog escapes after biting his arm. It runs to a cemetery, sitting at one particular grave, that of a Laura Tollins.

Because of the incident with the dog, Walter is late meeting his wife and while she is waiting outside a bookstore, she browses through a book called "The Number 23". When Walter finally arrives, Agatha buys it for him.

Walter starts reading the book and sees some similarities between himself and the main character, a detective only known as "Fingerling". The main character explains how he got the name Fingerling from an obscure children's book, and Walter discovers he has the same book. Also of note, the book details Fingerling's meeting with the "Suicide Blonde" whose obsession with the number 23 drives her to murder and suicide. Her explanations and calculations of almost everything — including names, birthdates, and colors — all adding up to 23, drive her insane. These calculations are scribbled all over her apartment walls.

Walter tells his wife and son about this phenomenon from the book, and shows them his calculations, done on their dining room walls, in which his name, house number and social security number all add up to 23, as well. 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 is self-published and self-printed, and the author, Topsy Kretts ("Top Secrets"), never released any other books.

Fingerling's story continues. It begins to make Walter believe that Dr. French has romantic designs on Agatha. Walter begins to think anything associated with the number 23 is cursed or evil because 2 divided by 3 equals 0.6 recurring, or the Number of the Beast, as Dr. French explained.

Walter's continued paranoia makes him have dreams of killing Agatha, again paralleling the book. Walter has such a vivid dream that he leaves the house in the middle of the night, goes to King Edward's Hotel, and requests room 23.

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, 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 greater than [his] own."

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. 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, and tells Walter nothing of it. She goes to the abandoned institute, finds Leary's old office (number 318), where the walls are scribbled with the number 23. 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.

Meanwhile, Robin and Walter, who have been examining the book, discover that every 23rd word on every 23rd page spells out a message, which directs them to dig in a park under "The Steps to Heaven." There, they 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-tinted hands at their home, Walter confronts her about taking the bones and accuses her of writing the book. She tells Walter that, in fact, he 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 runs angrily upstairs in disbelief.

He returns to the hotel room where he tears down the wallpaper and finds chapter 23 of the book written on the wall, identifying himself as the author, declaring it his confession and explaining everything; Walter's 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, and then jumped off of 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 number 23 himself. Because of the fall, Walter suffered memory loss and upon leaving the institute he met Agatha.

Walter now turns himself in, thereby freeing the professor and finally relieving his conscience. According to Walter's lawyer, the judge will take "lightly" to him since he turned himself in. Though entering prison, Walter Sparrow seems optimistic about his and his family's future. Right before the movie ends, in the prison, the clock points one hand at 2 and the other at 3.

At the end of the movie you see the Bible reading from Numbers 32:23 "You may be sure that your sin will find you out."

Spoilers end here.

[edit] 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 & Young Fingerling
Lynn Collins as Isobel Lydia Hunt a.k.a. The Suicide Blonde
Bud Cort as Dr. Leary

[edit] Reception

The film has received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, with the review tallying website rottentomatoes.com reporting that 153 out of the 167 reviews they tallied were negative for a score of 8% and a certification of "rotten".^[1] 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 "two thumbs up" on the television show Ebert & Roeper (Pennachio was standing in for Roger Ebert due to Ebert's recent illness).^[2]

Fan reviews have been more kind however, with the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) reporting that their users have given the film a weighted score of 6.2 out of 10 based on over 7,833 reviews tallied thus far.^[3]

[edit] Trivia

Several viewers have noted similarities between the film and The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, whose birthday is February 3 (2/3 in US date format).
The character Fingerling plays a saxophone, an instrument which has 23 keys on it.
The number 23 is referred to as having a strong numerological significance in The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson.
Dr. Sirius Leary's office is number 318. 31-8 is 23, (3×8)-1 is 23.
The number 23 was twice part of a license plate of a car in the movie, it says: 023-5HJ so obviously there is 23 and then there is 5 + H (8) + J (10) = 23.
The hotel that Sparrow writes his book in is called King Edward Hotel. Using a system where A = 1, B = 2, and so on, the hotel's name adds up to 156. There are 13 letters lit in hotel's sign (the letters O and T in hotel are burnt out), if 156 is divided by 13, the result is 12. 12 and 13, or without the first digits of each number, 23. Another method to derive 23 is by adding the values of only the lit letters in King and Edward, and the unlit letters in Hotel, so that King is 41, Edward is 55, and Hotel is 35. If the sum of the digits of each of these numbers is taken, the result is 5, 10, and 8, which add up to 23.
The letters in the dog's name - Ned - if properly transformed by an alphanumeric cypher, add up to 23 as well. 14 (N) + 5 (e) + 4 (d) = 23.
The license plate on the front of Sparrow's truck reads 906 8TC. If 9, 0, 8, and 6 are add they become 23, if you count the letters: T(20) and C(3) = 23.
The bookstore that Agatha gets "The Number 23" from is address number 599. 5+9+9 = 23.