To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

13 Tzameti is a Georgian film which deals with a Georgian emigrant named Sebastien who takes a roofing job to help out his poor family. After his employer's death(before paying him), he steals a letter which his employer received which included a train ticket. He does this with the hope that this ticket will lead him to a scope of making big bucks as he had overheard his employer speaking along those lines about this letter. But unfortunately following the trail of the letter makes him step into a world of utter horror where he ends up having to participate in a deadly game of Russian roulette where gamblers bet on the outcome.There are aspects of the film which are very impressive, but there are also huge chunks of the film which are very underwhelming. Let's first talk about the things that I liked. The actual scenes of volunteers taking part in the Russian roulette are extremely well directed. The director brilliantly creates and maintains the tension in the scenes. The sheer horror and the hopelessness that the protagonist experiences during these games after being forced into them made me sit on the edge of my seat and got my adrenaline rushing. I think '13 Tzameti' shares a thematic resemblance with the David Lynch classic 'Blue Velvet'. In both the films, the naive protagonist unknowingly walks into an alien, dark underworld which leads to horrifying consequences. While Jeffrey in 'Blue Velvet' steps into this world due to his unrestricted curiosity, Sebastien in '13 Tzameti' steps into the darkness due to financial needs and his responsibility towards his family engulfed by poverty. However there are a lot of things in the film that disappointed me. The writing in the script is weak. The characters are all two dimensional. We get no insight into their lives. We get no back-story. The actor playing the protagonist(Sebastien) has no presence and his acting skills are clearly inadequate. We see random characters appear and then become completely absent for the rest of the film. Although the direction in the roulette scenes are good, however in all the other scenes the direction is pretty lacklustre and bland. After watching the film, it is clear to me that Géla Babluani is great at directing set pieces, but below average at handling character moments and character developments. So, I think while writing the script, he primarily prioritised the set pieces in the Roulette scenes and just threw in some random characters and events around it to make up the film. I am giving this a generous 6, but it certainly left me underwhelmed big time, specially since I was expecting it to be remarkable based on the critical reception. It does have impressive moments in it, but it could have been so much better with better writing and direction.

Sebastien(George Babluani) is working as a roofer at the house of a drug addict who has hired him for repairs. The homeowner soon dies of an overdose and Sebastien has overheard him discussing a mysterious money making opportunity. He finds a train ticket and hotel reservation and uses them to pursue his dream of easy riches. Of course it all goes from bad to worse when Sebastien drifts into an underground, illegal and dangerous gambling operation.The dark and ominous tone is beautifully photographed in black and white, a very wise choice for this highly stylized French drama. It starts slowly but the tension builds gradually and your patience will be rewarded by staying with this gritty and sad observation of human nature. The violence is low key but riveting and unforgettable.

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.

While this is a simple story of behind-the scenes crime and gambling, it required above average acting for it to work. The actors do not disappoint. While the lead actor is excellent, just about everyone including the "brothers", the master of "ceremonies", bring out multiple facets of the characters in an unbelievably watchable way.The tension and relief are quite visible on most faces on consequent occasions - but the tension and relief are different for the different characters. This was the challenge for the actors and they have excelled.In order to truly appreciate the movie, one must be 1. mature. 2. able to imagine oneself as the different characters.