Times have changed. Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner railed against being labeled a number while today Pettyfer’s John Smith accepts his Number Four designation with little fuss. Then again having the symbols of your first three compatriots spontaneously burnt into the calf of your leg may have something to do with adopting such an attitude.
I Am Number Four skirts with being a Number Two at the start – Hey! You probably made that joke too! – but once it gets past the opening stage setting scenes, the movie quickly grabs some traction and rarely falters for the rest of its running time. Early going includes an opening action scene shot in the dark murky light, voice over narration, and Timothy Olyphant in a bad wig that combine to raise the cheese alert. Hang in there. Things improve quickly.
I Am Number Four is the launch of what DreamWorks hopes is another young adult film franchise. The story revolves around John Smith, an extra-terrestrial teenage with latent powers, and the aforementioned Number Four of the title. It is quickly established that John is part of a group of nine hidden protectors sent to Earth to escape the destruction of their home planet, Lorien. The teenagers are protected by a charm, which only allows them to be killed in a set order. The nine Loriens are being hunted down by a gang of Mogadorians. Mogadorians look very much like Eric Bana teen aged Romulans with shark gill olfactory abilities out on an intergalactic joyride of mailbox baseball.
The surviving six Loriens are into their teen aged years and are paired with a Guardian. For John that is Henri (Timothy Olyphant). The Guardians are tasked with protecting the Nine until they can reach an age where their powers appear and they can learn control them. Olyphant, sans his ten gallon hat, does more than yeoman work as John’s mentor and gets a surprising amount of screen time.
John is on the cusp of that age and his main power turns out to be Iron Man like blue repulsor rays in the palms of his hand. He is later joined by Number Six (Teresa Palmer). (Apparently Number Five was busy.) Her main power seems to be a combination ability of invisibility and becoming wraith-like entity. The film never clearly states the scope of powers, leaving the franchise creative wiggle room, but the Loriens definitely possess fire resistance. All of the SFX sequences are carried out by quite well and there are some pretty impressive action set pieces during the film’s climax.
Also quite strong is the cast of the movie. While Alex Pettyfer is saddled with the prototypical loner teenager, whom is tired of never being able to put roots and make real connections, he does project an air of concern and caring that allow us to empathise with him. John’s scenes with Sarah(Dianna Agron of Glee fame) have real chemistry as the two connect with one another. Number Six comes off as someone whose bark is worse than their bite. My favourite character was Sam played by Callan McAuliffe. Sam is the socially ostracised high school nerd who serves a dual purpose. The first is to show the underlying protector qualities that John possesses, even if he does want to acknowledge them. The second is to put in play pieces upon which the mythology of this franchise will be built up from. (A total SWAG – some wild assed guess – on my part but if Sam ends up being one of the six Lorien teenagers I would not be surprised.)
I Am Number Four does nothing ground breaking in terms of teenagers and the high school social milieu but it does it well with a likeable cast. The film is a quality production with impressive SFX and well directed sequences, be they action oriented or quiet moments. The stage is set for the franchise to continue at the end of the movie. Is this the next Twilight franchise? That will depend on how the target market responds to the cast.
Even though I am well outside the target demo, I found the film very entertaining and am totally on board for seeing another movie in this franchise.
