13 (Thirteen) - A mixed bag

`13' is about a young man who's down on his luck, so he thinks he gets a break when he takes the identity of someone else who might be in line for a good job. However, it all goes a little wrong when he finds out that the `good job' is taking part in a `Russian Roulette' tournament for the amusement of some shady gangsters.

And that's about it. The film isn't overly long and the main part of it is set in the `arena' (out-of-the-way warehouse) where the `players' hold guns to each others' heads and then pull the trigger on command of a shouty man up a ladder (who some people apparently found scary while I found him a bit comical as he only yells the same lines loudly, again and again throughout the whole film).

The reason the film is called `13' is because our begrudging hero is number 13 in the game. And, seeing as the film is about him, you may hazard a guess that he doesn't blow his brains out in the first round.

For an `indie' flick there are some other reasonably high-profile names in the cast - namely Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone and Jason Statham (although, for all you Statham fans, this is NOT one of his action films). There is little `action' just the tension of one round of Russian Roulette after the next.
It's not a bad film, I'm just not sure who it is intended for - it's sort of a gangster thriller with an attempt at injecting a bit of human drama into it.

Having looked online at what other people thought about it, it appears that whether you like it or not will depend on your views on the ending (so you're going to have to sit through the whole film before you see what I mean by that). There are worse ways to kill just over an hour (Russian Roulette for one).

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights