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I Am Number Four, based on the book of the same title by Pittacus Lore, released to theaters this past month. The premise, as explained in the teasers, is that there are nine special children being hunted down in order. Number Three has just died, and the title character (played by Alex Pettyfer) is Number Four.
This is a science-fiction story, set in contemporary times, and the numbered characters are specially bred aliens that were their planet's last hope against an invading race, the Mogadorians. By the opening of the movie, the Mogadorians have wiped out the entire population of Lorien, and are now seeking to destroy the Nine children hidden away on Earth. Each child has a guardian warrior (Number Three's played by Timothy Olyphant), who works to keep the child both hidden and protected from the Mogadorians pursuing them.
The original book was written for the Young Adult market, and the movie is similarly geared towards a family audience. Rated PG-13 for some intense action, the film is free of sexual scenes and profanity, and the violence is accordingly toned down.
The story picks up just before Number Three is killed, and then switches over to Number Four, enjoying a typical American teen-age weekend in Florida. Upon realizing that Number Three is dead, Three and his guardian move to small town Ohio, change their aliases again, and work to disappear from the grid.
If this worked, the movie wouldn't really go anywhere. Number Three, now going by the alias John Smith, decides he will still blend in better if he acts like the other teens in the town and attends the local High School. In school, he meets a girl, befriends an outcast nerd, and accordingly runs afoul of a group of bullies.
In the Internet Age, though, doing anything even halfway spectacular will rapidly land you on the video and social networking sites, and it isn't long before John Smith is once again on the grid.
Complicating the attempts at hiding, John's legacy powers begin to manifest, and it isn't long before the squad of Mogadorian goons is closing in on his location (if they didn't, it wouldn't make for much of a movie).
Overall, the movie was entertaining. The special effects were along the lines of what we've come to expect from Spielberg and Dreamworks, and the story does a decent job of mixing predictable elements with unexpected twists. My wife commented that it left her with the impression of "Twilight with aliens instead of vampires," but having neither read nor seen any of the Twilight series, I can't really agree or disagree with that assessment. I don't recall any segment of the film that I felt was dragging, though some scenes are better to miss for a bathroom break than others.
I'd like to pick up the book soon, and see if it explains some questions the movie left unanswered. I won't load this review with them, lest I end up detracting from the reader's enjoyment of the film. As with many sci-fi movies, there are aspects which are better just accepted rather than thought much about. Granted, one of these is something that can actually be a bit fun to consider - why, oh why, are the Mogadorians, a race capable of interstellar travel and genocide on a planetary scale, constrained to hunt down the Lorien children in numeric order? Is this an entire race of Adrian Monks? Will they go absolutely bonkers if they kill one of the kids out-of-turn? Once they take over a planet, do they set out to make all the continents and oceans even? Do they have assistants to hand them hand-wipes when needed? We may never know.
Or, maybe we will. The book is part of a series, and reports are that Spielberg has already negotiated the rights to the entire series. Whether we will see another movie in the series will likely depend on how well this one does in the box office.
Or, maybe it depends on whether the OCD Mogadorians insist on keeping the set together.
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