‘I Am Number Four’ should be No. 1

Director D.J. Caruso and Michael Bay have teamed up with DreamWorks in the new sci-fi thriller “I Am Number Four.”

The film opens in theatres everywhere today, and will surely delight the sci-fi crowd and thrill anyone who just wants to see aliens go at each other with no regard for time and place.

Caruso (“Eagle Eye,” “Disturbed”) does a decent job in putting a novel on screen in its truest form. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by authors James Frey and Jobie Hughes, “I am Number Four” is a mix of high school love and “Transformers.”

The film stars 20-year-old English actor Alex Pettyfer as “Number 4” (John Smith), one of nine infant aliens who fled their home planet of “Lorien” after the “Mogadorians,” another race of aliens invaded and destroyed all life on the planet. Now on Earth, the Mogadorians are searching for and killing all nine one by one in sequence of the numbers each infant is assigned. After the first three are killed, John (number four) becomes the next target. Timothy Olyphant (“Live Free or Die Hard,” “A Man Apart”) plays John’s protector and guardian “Henri,” who’s a whiz with computers and is trying to remain off the radar. John and Henri live as father and son while John poses as a high school student in Paradise, Ohio.

Diana Argon, star of the Fox television show “Glee” plays Sarah Hart, a naive schoolgirl with a jealous ex-boyfriend (Jake Abel) and a passion for photography. Kevin Durand (“Legion,” “X-Mens Origins: Wolverine”) plays the role of the bloodthirsty commander of the Mogadorians.

Pettyfer plays a hero com ing into his own as an alien running from death, and just realizing his true potential. Throughout the film, John’s innocence slowly disappears as he grows into “adulthood,” learning about love and the value of life, human and alien.

Olyphant’s role as the caretaker Henri is a nice change from the shady characters that he’s come to be identified with. He gives a great performance for the first half of the film until he dies in a basement brawl that makes you wonder why Caruso didn’t just abstain from following the novel to the tee. His presence is felt throughout the film, and could have benefited from keeping him alive.

At times, the love scenes are a bit cliché, with Pettyfar and Argon’s characters staring into each other’s eyes and holding hands, but it provides a somewhat decent subplot if nothing else. The dialogue is nothing to brag about, and since the target audience are teens, so no one should expect Shakespeare.

The film’s producer Michael Bay (“Transformers,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning”) brings the same intensity from the Transformer series into “I Am Number Four.” Since both alien races possess superhuman powers like blocking fire and lumen (ability to produce light from the hand), Bay creates the best-choreographed fight scenes since his first Transformers film in 2007. The last half-hour introduces “Number 6,” (Teresa Palmer) a female alien from Lorien who is looking to unite the other eight aliens into a cohesive unit.

The film was made with the hopes of attracting the teenage fans of the “Twilight” saga films and TV shows like “Vampire Diaries.” HarperCollins, the publisher of the “I Am number Four” book series, plans to release six more installments in the future.

Caruso’s vision seems poised to become the next supernatural film series everyone will soon be talking about. In a season where most movies have been mediocre, “I Am Number Four” seems like the adrenaline fix that moviegoers have been waiting for.