I am Number 4

Rating: 4 Shurikens

This was an interesting and actually quite enjoyable film, very much like a comic book series. The main character is one of nine young people sent to Earth after their own world is plundered by some very mean biker-looking aliens. The evil aliens are hunting down the nine survivors, killing them one-by-one. The third one has just been terminated when the movie begins, thus the title. Number Four is John Smith, not his real name, the young alien who is discovering special gifts, much like what we would call Super Powers.

Alex Petyfer plays John Smith, our hero. He's a reasonably good actor, and very good looking, which was evidenced by the large number of girls in the theater when I went to see it. You don't usually see girls in such numbers at sci-fi and comic book movies. The performance is pretty good, in that he delivers believability to the fantasy component, and also a realistic teenager in high school as the new kid who is chosen as a target of the big man on campus.

John has a guardian, who is a warrior from his home world, who keeps him a few steps ahead of the Magadorians. Timothy Olyphant, who has not seen any really big movie roles yet, plays Henri, who is the voice of reason and surrogate father to Number Four. He relies on his smarts and experience, because he doesn't have any interesting abilities, kind of like Batman's butler, Alfred. The Magadorian leader is played by Kevin Durand, who played Little John in last year's Robin Hood, which was reviewed here previously. Durand also has been seen in the Lost TV series, and as Blob in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

John and his guardian are on the run from the Magadorians, like John Connor and his mother, Sarah in the late Terminator TV series. As the movie begins, John is being flamboyant and drawing attention to himself so that Henri realizes that it is time to move on. The destination he has chosen is a town in Ohio, where there is something that needs to be revisited from the past. When they get there, John signs up to go to High School, where he meets Sarah, his love interest, and Sam, the nerd who is always being picked on because his father, who believed in UFO's, left him when he was a young boy and he believes his father was abducted by space aliens.

Sarah is played by Diannam Agron, a very pretty girl who is also a star of the popular Glee television series, which I have never watched. Her role doesn't do much to test the skills of an actress, but she does portray a likable and sympathetic character. Sam is played by Callin McCauliff, who was in a movie called Flipped, which was a nostalgic love story which I couldn't bring myself to watch. He makes a good sidekick for John, and adds a couple of good laughs to the movie. As a nerd, he does well.

Then, there is the other minor villain of the piece, Mark, the Big Man on Campus, the bully who picks on the nerd, the quarterback on the football team, and the ex-boyfriend of Sarah, who hasn't quite given up on her, even though she is not with him anymore. Mark is played by another near-newbie to the big screen, and delivers a good performance as a typical very-unlikeable high school bully.

When Henri and John run from the house on the beach at the opening of the movie, they burn a lot of personal effects, and then leave in a hurry. After they leave, another blond girl shows up on a motorcycle, and searches their place. After she finds something or another that tells her she is on the right track, she sets the place on fire, and leaves. As it explodes, she seems to have some sort of force field that protects her from the huge flaming explosion of the house. It turns out that she is Number Six!

We never get a name for Number Six, but she is played by Teresa Palmer. It may be recalled that she was in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which is another movie I reviewed before. As Becky, she was helpless but brave, but as Number Six, she is confident and quite powerful. She comes to the scene closer to the end, with knowledge of her abilities that provides a nice counterpoint to John's inexperience.

Rounding out the cast is the shape shifting creature called a chimera. It is first seen as a salamander that jumps into the car when Henri and John set out for Ohio, the morphs into a cute beagle that suddenly appears as a stray, which John adopts. This reminds me of a vehicle from the Saturday morning cartoons, The Cute Animal. Johnny Quest had bandit, Space Ghost had the cute monkey, The Jetsons had Astro, and on and on. The chimera is just that sort of character, and it plays a pivotal role in the resolution of the story.

I am Number Four is well worth the time spent, and is among the top 3 movies of the week. The story is satisfying, the good guys win, the bad guys lose, the hero gets the girl, and the ending cries out for a sequel. What more can a moviegoer ask for? Four Shurikens.