THE PLOT THUS FAR
A naive young man assumes a dead man’s identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.
WHAT WE THOUGHT
“13″ has an interesting concept and it could have worked for a short film, but not for a full length feature film. Even at 97 minutes long the movie feels stretched and the dialogue really didn’t help either. There are some interesting and thrilling moments, but not enough to save this film. I had no idea what 13 was about before watching it so at the beginning I was drawn and intrigued to what was going to happen, but after the suspense was over the film got lost in the narrative.
I also was expecting more from the cast because there were some interesting actors involved in the project, but the only real one who stands out in this film was Sam Riley. Riley gave a great performance and he is probably the best thing about this film. Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham, Alexander Skarsgard, and Michael Shannon were all underused, and they had little screen time to truly shine. With a better script this movie could have been much better. I was also a little disappointed with the ending, but I don’t want to give anything away, so I won’t say anything more about it.
The less you know about the plot probably the better, but since the movie isn’t really that good I will go ahead and tell you about it. If you don’t want to know anything about the story then just go ahead and skip this paragraph. Vince (Sam Riley) is an electrician who has to put his home on mortgage in order to pay for his father’s operations because he’s very ill. Apparently the operation isn’t successful and they have to operate him again, which means Vince is going to need more money. That same day while he is working at someone’s house named William (Michael Berry Jr.) he overhears him speaking to his wife about the opportunity he just got of making a lot of money, while holding an envelope he just opened in his hands.
The Blu-Ray comes with no special features. The transfer is strong enough, but there’s a lot of haze in outside scenes. The HD audio was very lossy and I couldn’t quite pin the mix used. The results I got from my receiver didn’t quite match up to the DolbyTrueHD track promised on the back of the package. In the end, I’d recommend a rental.
RELEASE DATE: 11/08/2011
