Watch 13 Tzameti For Free

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Awesome Movie

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Nearly impossible to discuss without heavy spoilers, this unusual thriller from France involves a young workman who steals his suicidal employer's invite to a secret organisation, knowing only that by attending an opportunity exists for him to get rich quick. As it turns out, the young man has inadvertently signed up to a Russian Roulette game of sorts in which the bored and wealthy place wagers on which participants (from a group of thirteen) will survive with a payout to both the last man standing and anyone betting on him. It is a fascinating idea with all the participants being very willful despite knowing that their survival is a matter of luck (are they that desperate for money or that suicidal?) as well as all the betters conversing about the game as if there is some sort of skill involved in predicting a winner. Thought-provoking as all this is, more than half an hour of the movie elapses before the protagonist finds out about the Russian Roulette game and it is near the halfway point before they start playing. The film also goes on for at least twenty minutes after the game is over, which is a little too long given that all intensity dissipates once the game is through. That said, the middle section of '13 Tzameti' is utterly captivating with nail-biting tension in the air and those scenes alone render the film worth checking out at least once. It is also worth noting how the choice to shoot the film in black and white really captures the starkness of the situation and turns the picturesque outskirts cottage where the game takes place into an eerie location.

Carpenter Sébastien is hired by the mysterious house-owner Jean-Francois to fix his roof. When the house-owner suddenly dies, Sébastien finds a valuable letter that contains clear instructions.Géla Babluani's dark debut from modern day France about a young immigrant who takes a risky choice to help his family, opens as a classic film-noir and develops after the chronologies time-frame to a tight psychological thriller about a cynical underground milieu where the unknowing protagonist realizes that the consequences of his choice has forced him into a situation that he can only get out of by conquering death. The compassion, warmth and harmony Babluani suggests of in the character introduction is alienated after the point-of-no-return, and from here on out Géla Babluani depicts a hazardous gambling community where human worth means nothing and money everything.Promising Georgian-French director Géla Babluani was possibly inspired by 1940s American Film Noir and Robert Bresson's metaphysical dramas when he started making this formalistic art film that is associable with Juan-Carlos Fresnadillo's "Intacto" (2001). "Contestant 13" is vigorously filmed and photographed in a black-and-white color that increases the films cold realism, concentrates the plot and tones down the emotional aspects. The variations of long and short takes, the short and concise dialog and the frequent use of close ups intensifies the drama in this stylized character study, whole heartedly played by the director's debuting brother George Babluani. The misty background music and the minimal elements of humor decreases the apocalyptic mood in this tense feature film debut. This is 90 minutes in breath-taking excitement and observation of West-European art film.

This moody little French film has, at its core, a good commercial idea but for me, the manner in which it is told is all wrong. Shot in gloomy black-and-white (presumably to add to the bleakness of the tale rather than economic necessity because surely black-and-white film must be more expensive to process than colour these days) the film struggles to get the viewer on the side of the young protagonist and therefore struggles to develop the element of suspense it needs to be a success.A roofer working on a beach-side house, finds an envelope containing a train ticket and hotel room number lost by his employer, who has just overdosed on heroin. Learning that he won't get paid as a result, and having previously overheard the dead guy say he was waiting for the envelope because he would earn a lot of money from it, our young hero decides to find out where the train ticket will lead him. After following a convoluted set of instructions he discovers he has stumbled into a nightmarish situation from which there is only one possibility of escape.I won't go into too much detail about the tournament that our hero chances upon, but I'm pretty sure that was the single image in the writer's head when he started writing and that everything else developed around that central idea of thirteen men in a room. If I'm right, that might go some way to explaining why I felt so uninvolved with what was going on. Although it's a good half-hour (at least) before anything really happens, little attempt seems to have been made to allow us to get to know the (nominal) hero, and his reasons for pursuing a potentially perilous mission just don't ring true.Everything is very low-key and downbeat, a technique which really should heighten the tension and the horror of the situation, but which just leaves everything feeling flat. The young guy in the lead is fairly convincing and plays his part well, and there are some wonderfully weather-beaten faces on display throughout, but everything seems a little bit, well, pointless – with no message imparted and an unnecessarily depressing ending.

The less you know about this extraordinary existential thriller the better. If, like me, you are seeing the film 'blind', so to speak, it will blow you away. Reviewing it is problematic since any mention of the plot is almost to give too much away. It's best you find out gradually what is happening in the same way the central character does. Suffice to say, this is a highly original work and it's genuinely terrifying; a one-off, it heralds a brilliant new talent in Gela Babluani who both wrote and directed, (his brother George is the lead so it's something of a family affair).Superbly shot in widescreen black and white by Tariel Meliava, the film has the texture of a nightmare. It certainly scared me a lot more than the last half dozen stalk-and-slash movies I'd seen. Of course a Hollywood remake is already in the pipeline. Normally I would advise you not to give it the time of the day except for the fact that the powers that be have had the common sense to hire Babluani to remake his own film. Hopefully he won't sell out but I doubt very much if he will improve on this stunning original.