SPIN THE CHAMBER PULL THE TRIGGER:
Life is tough, it’s also not fair, but for Vince (played by Sam Riley) life has taken away all his choices and his money. With his father laid up in the hospital needing multiple surgeries, the bills are too much for him and his family to pay. After finding out that more money will be needed, Vince takes the risk of posing as a dead man to gain entry into a game that could pay off more money than Vince would need or it could take his life. Russian roulette is the name of the game, the rules are simple, load the gun then pull the trigger, if you win you move on but if you lose you are dead. Some are in it for the money and some like Jefferson (played by Mickey Rourke) are forced into the game by gamblers who bet of the lives of their players.

READY AIM FIRE:
There are some movies where the ideas might sound good but in reality they are a little on the dumb side. 13 is one of those movies that walked past the dumb side and entered into plain stupid. Here’s the plot, underground game of Russian roulette, gamblers bet on their guy, that guy plays the game at risk of death, and then the winner gets paid or maybe dies, it is Russian roulette after-all. How or why this movie is not too surprising, I’ve seen many horrible movies that shouldn’t have been made, but what is surprising is that 13 has Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Ben Gazzara, and Ray Winstone acting here.

With such actors as these, especially with Jason Statham, I was expecting this movie to be filled with lots of action, big fight scenes, and a beautiful girl. However, this had to be one of the most uneventful movie with a plot that’s built for suspense that I’ve ever seen. Nothing ever happens, even when the game is being played and people are being killed, nothing happens. There’s no action, no fighting, no running, and there’s no beautiful woman as the love interest, just a slow progressing plot of guys with guns. It’s supposed to have a lot of tension being built as the movie but all it does it take forever to get to the next level and when it does it has an anticlimactic ending to the scene. At the start of the game the so called players use only 1 bullet in the guns but as the game progresses to the next level extra bullets are added to the guns. Now this is supposed to build the suspense and tension but it don’t, it just shows that though the characters are saying they there to bet on a game of chance but when the players are forced to play until all are dead but one, well that’s not really a game of chance.

Even though there is no action in this movie, the plot moves along very slowly, and the characters have no real development, the performance given by the actors was well done. It’s nothing that will be given an award, but with this style of movie, the acting is usually stale or over done. I think what makes the acting work well in this movie is that the characters don’t get much screen time. Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke would be the two main characters and most known actors in 13 but they barely have a half hour worth of screen time. In fact Mickey Rourke probably has less than 15 minutes of total on screen moments. His character does no more than fill a role as one of the players where he gets a short background as to why he’s in the game and then is used as an example to what happens to the player that gets the white ball. Beyond that he didn’t do anything and he didn’t have many lines to say, which gave him a chance to act. Same goes for Jason Statham, though he had more screen time, he has less involvement in the story than Mickey Rourke did. Almost every character in this movie is forgettable, even Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke, and because of that the movie made no impression. It starts, there’s supposedly a middle, I’m thinking there was a reason for having the cops in it (even though I saw no point of having them because the characters did absolutely nothing to develop the movie or the characters), and then it just ends. One good aspect about the movie ending was having some closure to know it was over but it was just about as boring an ending as the whole movie was.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE ON BLU RAY:
Another disappointing Blu Ray and a reason why that just because it’s put on a medium that is a higher grade it don’t mean the product will be made any better for it. 13 has a lot of noise that can be seen in both the bright and dark scenes. It’s not a horrible look to watch but it’s noticeable and looks nothing like a Blu Ray. In fact the picture quality is not sharp at all and looks no better than SD channels on television looks. If I were to watch this on DVD I would bet I would see no difference in the quality. Adding to the low points to this Blu Ray is that there are no special features included. After watching a bad movie I can sometimes get enjoyment from seeing some deleted scenes, laughs from the goofs/blooper reel, or just watching a behind scenes featurette, but none of these are on here. This was a boring movie that has low quality, low audio levels, and no bonus features that make it a bland and dull watch.