I’d forgotten all about this flick previously which we covered a few times last year, and I believe the year before. Yup, it’s been around, though no one’s really seen it, which might tell you something about it. Well, co-star Mickey Rourke certainly wasn’t shy with his feelings about it (see the bottom of this post for more on that).
In short, it’s called 13, a remake of the 2006 French film of the same name, which I saw and liked! An minimalist, black and white, atmospheric, tense thriller that maybe owes more to its execution than its story; though a pretty good debut for Géla Babluani, the young French filmmaker of the original, who also wrote and directed this remake.
The American remake stars Sam Riley, 50 Cent, Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham and Ray Winstone.
Babluani said in a past interview that he changed quite a bit of the story for the remake, because he didn’t want to just reshoot his original in English. Whether the remake is better for it, no one knows so far, because, again, it hasn’t been released yet. Last we wrote about it, in 2010, it was to have been released in 2010, but never happened, and has been stuck in Limbo, which is often a bad sign.
But it now looks like a distribution company will take a chance on it as Deadline reports that Anchor Bay Films just acquired USA distribution rights to the film which centers on “a naive young man who assumes a dead man’s identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.“
No word though on how exactly they will release it and when; whether it’ll get a theatrical, straight to DVD, VOD, cable TV, or some combo of the 4 formats. When we know, you’ll know.
The deal with Anchor Bay was made at the Toronto International Film Festival which just got underway. It’s not being screened there, but is being shopped around for pickups. If anyone has actually seen the film, let us know your thoughts. Obviously, our main interest in the title is thanks to the fact that 50 Cent is in it, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be writing about it.
In an interview earlier this year when he was casually asked about it, the usually unfiltered Mickey Rourke had this to say:
Q: You [and 50 Cent] are in a movie together, right? REPLY: A really bad movie, yeah.
Q: What?! Is it out? REPLY: No, it’s so bad it can’t get out.
Q: Tell me why you made it. REPLY: For the money.
Q: But you think the movie’s bad. REPLY: Terrible.
Q: Why? REPLY: You have to watch it.
Do with that info what you will 😉
Here’s the English-language trailer of the remake, and underneath that, for comparison, is the trailer for the original 2006 film:
Here’s the trailer for the original:
