Home
Home

13 Tzameti (2005)

DVD Cover (Palm Pictures)
Add to Collection
Sign up to add this to your collection
Add to Favorites
Sign up to add this to your favorites
Overall Rating 73%
Overall Rating
Ranked #3,699
...out of 20,319 movies
Check In? Sign up to check in!

Connections: 13 Tzameti

Sebastian, a young man, has decided to follow instructions intended for someone else, without knowing where they will take him. Something else he does not know is that Gerard Dorez, a cop on a knife-edge, is tailing him. When he reaches his destination, Sebastian falls into a degenerate, clandestine world of mental chaos behind closed doors in which men gamble on the lives of others men. --IMDb
User Image
Review by Chad
Added: December 11, 2006
Every once in a while, a movie comes along that can not be properly described without spoiling things for the first-time viewer. This leaves me, your faithless reviewer, in a bit of a bind when it comes to writing the synopsis; do I give you enough details to get you interested and risk spoiling some of the surprises, or do I simply say "take my word for it" and recommend it? I'm going to attempt to hit a happy median in this review, but I will say that this is one of those rare movies where the less you know going in, the more you'll enjoy it. With that in mind, skip right on over the next paragraph if you want to take my advice.

Sébastien (George Babluani) is a relatively poor handyman who has received the unenviable task of repairing the roof of an eclectic couples' house. As the days go by and he continues with his job, he overhears bits and pieces of conversations between the couple. He learns that they're in debt and that they probably won't be able to pay him for his work, but he also learns that the man of the house has a job coming that will bring them a very large sum of cash. One thing leads to another (again, I don't want to spoil anything), and Sébastien winds up with the envelope that contains the details of the high-paying job at hand. While there is indeed a large sum of cash at stake, what he doesn't know is that it's not exactly a job - it's more of a game - and it turns out that once you begin "playing" it, you can't just walk away from it without dire consequences.

I've been hearing a lot of good things about this movie over the last year or so, but damned near every mention of it has said the same thing that I said in my opening paragraph: go in with no knowledge of what happens and you'll enjoy it more. I have to admit that reading that statement everywhere made me quite curious, but I held out and waited to see it for myself. Thanks to those fine folks over at Palm Pictures, I recently received a screener copy of it and had a chance to see if it lived up to the hype. After watching it, I can certainly say that it does - and although I'm disappointed that it's slated for an American remake before it even hits our shores, I can certainly see why the powers-that-be would want to take that chance.

This is the debut film from director Géla Babluani, and what a way to start out your movie-making career. What he has created here is the true definition of "thriller", and once things get rolling, it will keep you on the edge of your seat until the credits start to roll. The opening twenty minutes (give or take) perfectly set up the characters and the plot, and once everything is established for us at home, it never lets up.

The rules of the game reminded me of another film, and I could draw some comparisons to it here in order to give you a better feel for the tone of this film, but to do so would spoil the big revelation regarding the game. However, I will say that the movie in question wasn't a huge Hollywood blockbuster (no, it wasn't Saw, nor was it any of the various The Most Dangerous Game clones), but I'm pretty sure that a couple of you readers may have seen it. My point for mentioning this isn't to tease you readers with subtle hints about what happens, but to instead point out that while this storyline isn't entirely original, it does take a plot that has been used before and makes it work much, much better than that other film did.

The film is shot in black-and-white, and while this nostalgic effect has been used with various degrees of success in recent times, I have to say that it worked out wonderfully here. This is due to the fact that the director knew how to use this effect to get the most out of the scenes at hand. Take a Hitchcock picture, for example - the man was working with black-and-white film (not by choice, granted) and he knew how to take full advantage of this lack of color by creating ingenious shots mixed with perfect usage of shadows and light. This is in stark contrast to some of the recent films that have been released in black-and-white, films where the director simply shot everything in color and ran it through a greyscale filter. Babluani falls in the former category, and although I wouldn't place him up there with Hitchcock just yet, if he continues releasing films like this, his name will certainly rank up there in due time.

This one comes highly recommended by yours truly. It's rare that a film builds up this amount of hype and actually lives up to it, but that's exactly how it worked with tonight's feature presentation. Combine an ingenious storyline with flawless acting (acting which is so natural that it doesn't even seem like acting) and hand it over to a director who knows what he's doing, and you wind up with one hell of a film. 9/10.
Kari Byron's Sex Cyborg #1: Kari Byron's Sex Cyborg - added January 15, 2007 at 1:51am
Oh my, yes sir, this was good. The movie excelled superbly in keeping me on the edge my seat and I believe it did so due to it's dark execution of unconditional realism. All of the acting and every action by the characters seemed most natural; the light amount of dialogue was very apt. Since there's never any little quaint or wayward scenes straying the bleak progression, the tension sticks and accumulates, plus the use of black-and-white was definitely a smart decision, as it all works perfectly to well aid the realness of the unscrupulous story.
:Sigh: And about there being a remake in the works for this... ugh, I don't know... I just don't understand remakes.
9/10
Sign up to add your comment. Sign up to add your comment.
Recommended Movies
13 Swimming Pool Funny Games Bruiser Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo The Machinist The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest The Girl Who Played With Fire The Hole Hannibal Rising Dark Corners Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces Now You See Me, Now You Don't Hard Candy Noriko's Dinner Table Orphan A Tale Of Two Sisters
Layout, reviews and code © 2000-2024 | Privacy Policy
Contact: Join us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Review Updates