13: Game of Death

Chit is a salesman. He loses his job, his car is repossessed and his father wants money from him. A call comes to his phone: he is offered a game of thirteen tasks, and money will be paid into his account as he completes each. The first is easy: kill a fly. The second is easy too. Then the tasks grow heavier. Who is running the game is unknown, and past a certain point he cannot get out. Chookiat Sakveerakul directs. The source is a Thai comic. The idea is gradual surrender: every task is a little worse than the last and the character finds each reasonable because he has already come so far. The second subject is being watched; that the game is being recorded and that someone is viewing it becomes steadily clearer. The level of violence is high and some tasks are distressing; the narrative builds them not as spectacle but as a limit of endurance. It was made when Thai genre cinema was drawing international attention and was later remade in America. Its limit is the ending; the explanation behind the game weakens the idea and the last section accelerates. Who it is for: viewers who like Thai thrillers and hard genre films. Who it is not for: the violence is severe, some scenes are sickening, and the last section does not answer the tension it built.