This is a nice movie from Thailand that basically deals with the subject of movies like "Running Man", "The game" and similar movies... that is reducing life to a thrill-seeking reality show. Where "13 - game of death" starts is with salesman Pusit. His life is rather on the way down at the moment. Sales are slow for his job in a musical sales business where a colleague steals his best customers. His car gets repossessed, his mum needs to borrow money from him and it seems he still struggles with the loss of his girlfriend. To top things off his boss fires him and just as it couldn't get any worse his phone rings and someone tells him he was chosen from a pool of unlucky people who need some money to participate in a reality game show. There is no information about the show, he is just contacted by cellphone and presented with one of his 13 challenges... if he masters all 1Million Dollars is his.
The first challenges start of rather harmless... Pusit has to kill a fly, then eat the fly and you can guess they crank up the demands of their challenges. Where the movie starts of in a drama/Thriller fashion it soon incorporates some comedic elements when Pusit has to go to a playground and make some children cry which is a rather odd scene. He is soon looked after by the police for beating up people and no one knows he is just following the orders given through his cellphone that has a pretty annoying car alarm sound ring-tone. Beside the comedy elements the movie tends to freak out with some gross scenes where Pusit chucks down a nicely garnished plate of poo in a restaurant or he has to get a decomposed corpse out of a well. The mixture of these offbeat elements with fights, comedy and chases is kind of interesting and different and to top it off there is a lot of social commentary in the movie. I especially like the black humor that is incorporated like when Pusit has to beat the boyfriend of his ex-girl unconscious with a chair but the guy just won't get knocked out. Every time he wants to explain to his ex-girl he has to get back to work and beat the guy again. You can guess that it soon leads to questions of life or death and the question if Pusit will become a murder for money. In the end you realize that all the challenges and the game have more in common with Pusits life than you thought and this is where the movie takes a fall. There sure are several flaws like he duration of 120 minutes which start to drag after a while or the bad English dubbing and some rather bad acting and plot holes. But the finale doesn't just keep the whole game show concept obscure but also adds elements that make absolutely no sense in how the challenges were chosen and how they monitored the whole city with Pusit running amok. If you like a littleoffbeat movies give this one a try but don't expect to much plot-wise because it really gets pretty messy in the script towards the end.Anyway, it kept me entertained for most of the time... only thing thatjust didn't get into my head was the final scene with the girl on the bench... what the hell was that supposed to mean?
The first challenges start of rather harmless... Pusit has to kill a fly, then eat the fly and you can guess they crank up the demands of their challenges. Where the movie starts of in a drama/Thriller fashion it soon incorporates some comedic elements when Pusit has to go to a playground and make some children cry which is a rather odd scene. He is soon looked after by the police for beating up people and no one knows he is just following the orders given through his cellphone that has a pretty annoying car alarm sound ring-tone. Beside the comedy elements the movie tends to freak out with some gross scenes where Pusit chucks down a nicely garnished plate of poo in a restaurant or he has to get a decomposed corpse out of a well. The mixture of these offbeat elements with fights, comedy and chases is kind of interesting and different and to top it off there is a lot of social commentary in the movie. I especially like the black humor that is incorporated like when Pusit has to beat the boyfriend of his ex-girl unconscious with a chair but the guy just won't get knocked out. Every time he wants to explain to his ex-girl he has to get back to work and beat the guy again. You can guess that it soon leads to questions of life or death and the question if Pusit will become a murder for money. In the end you realize that all the challenges and the game have more in common with Pusits life than you thought and this is where the movie takes a fall. There sure are several flaws like he duration of 120 minutes which start to drag after a while or the bad English dubbing and some rather bad acting and plot holes. But the finale doesn't just keep the whole game show concept obscure but also adds elements that make absolutely no sense in how the challenges were chosen and how they monitored the whole city with Pusit running amok. If you like a littleoffbeat movies give this one a try but don't expect to much plot-wise because it really gets pretty messy in the script towards the end.Anyway, it kept me entertained for most of the time... only thing thatjust didn't get into my head was the final scene with the girl on the bench... what the hell was that supposed to mean?