Film Friday: 13 (2010)

I’m going to recommend a movie to you, but I’m not completely sure why -- I’m not even sure I enjoyed it. The movie is 13 and I’m recommending this film because it feels unique. In the modern world of highly-packed films with formulaic plots, this is not that. This is no smooth Hollywood production. It’s not clever. It’s not pretty. What it is though, is interesting.

** heavy spoiler alert **

Note the spoiler warning. This film isn’t full of twists and it’s not packed with surprises, but it’s one of those films where the drama is best when you learn what is happening as you watch.

13 is a remake of the French film 13 Tzameti and it has quite a cast. It stars unknown Sam Riley as Vincent, an electrician from Ohio. He learns that a man who has just died had some sort of high paying job he was to perform. Vincent decides to take this man’s place and hopes they let him do the job instead, whatever it is. Others in the cast include Alexander Skarsgard, who becomes Vincent’s contact, Ben Gazzara, Ray Winstone, Mickey Rourke, who was recently broken out of a Mexican jail, 50 Cent, who can’t act to save his life, Michael Shannon, who defines overacting in this film, and Jason Statham who becomes the antagonist.

As the story progresses, Vincent is given a train ticket which he uses to head north. He’s being followed by the police and is told to evade them. Then he’s picked up and taken to an old, abandoned mansion, where a contest is to be held. The contest involves a form of Russian Roulette, where the competitors stand in a circle and fire on the person before them as rich people bet on them. This contest combines the random element of not knowing if the gun is loaded along with a speed element as anyone shot cannot discharge their own weapon.

This is an interesting film on many levels. In some ways, I hate it. It’s an ugly film. It feels like it’s shot on low grade film stock. It’s dark. The actors are all kind of ugly. The setting is nasty, it’s not anywhere you would have a picnic. The story is really dark too, and keeps getting darker. These things make the film unpleasant, but they also work in that they make the film much more real than most modern movies. Even the unreal idea of organizing something like this contest is easy to accept since this is done in a dank old mansion with ugly people rather than some ritzy studio set. Indeed, throughout, the film has a quality to it which makes you believe this is really happening, something you never get in the glossy films Hollywood normally makes.

I’m also not sure I like the acting. It’s either horrifically bad or strangely brilliant. Again, it’s hard to tell. Riley can’t maintain his accent and periodically fails to sound American. Mickey Rourke is a walking cliche of Mickey Rourke on film. 50 Cent looks scared of the camera. Michael Shannon is clearly trying to get noticed so he gets more roles. Ben Gazzara, well, he's very likeable, but you get the feeling he died three days before filming began. The only actors who really prove to be competent are Statham, Winstone and Skarsgard. Yet, somehow, the acting works. Each of these characters stands out in a way which the writing itself doesn’t merit.

The other thing that’s interesting about this film is the simplicity of the plot. These days, films like this are typically made to be so hip and stylized that you expect double-crosses and triple-crosses and some amazing reveal at the end where you realize the whole thing was a quadruple-cross from the get go. But this film doesn’t do that. This film moves from scene to scene with a strange sort of simplicity and that makes the story stronger. Now, that’s not to say the film is predictable. To the contrary, you never really know what will happen next because the film keeps throwing unexpected things at you. These aren’t big things, they are things like a player asking for a chair or a player having a problem loading a gun, but they are enough to keep you from ever feeling like the plot just moves smoothly to preordained points. Instead, it feels like the film is being made up minute by minute and that adds a real sense of unpredictability to a movie even though the story itself is very predictable.

I think there are several lessons here. For one thing, realism can sell even an unreal movie provided all of its pieces feel real. The moment you start adding glitz, the unreality gets highlighted, but so long as you stay true to the more gritty way reality is, the more believable the film will feel. Secondly, this film shows how much minor disruptions, like a player asking for a chair or a janitor picking up garbage, can help make a film feel more real. These aren’t moments that you would consider “plot points,” but they injected moments of the unexpected into the film which made a predictable plot feel unpredictable.

As I said, this is a fascinating film because none of the elements are very good -- the visuals, the acting, the writing, the plot... all second tier. But all together, they seem to rise above their defects and create a movie that is compelling, even if it wasn’t a movie I liked per se. I recommend giving this one a try.