‘13’ has enough thrills, suspense to beat competition

In this day and age, it's getting much harder to pretend to be someone else, so cases of mistaken identity are usually very rare.  

With today's technology, you have access to birth certificates, death certificates, endless records of peoples' lives and fingerprints.

I will admit that there have been days where I wondered what it would be like to live in another person's shoes.  

I had always thought of the good aspects, like having more money or looking different.  Unfortunately, there can be some pretty bad elements to that, as well.  

"13" begins with a young man finding a mysterious envelope filled with instructions that were originally meant for someone else, another man who is already dead.  Being the intelligent person that he is, this young man follows the directions, winds up at a shady house and is  put into a terrifying world.  The stakes are high and the death toll is even higher.

The game is a group session of Russian roulette.  Each man is given a bullet and told to spin the chamber of their gun.  When the light in the room turns on each man has to shoot the man in front of him.  

The men who survive this stage move on to round two.  

Once you get into the game, there is no way to get out unless you are shot during the game or shot while trying to leave.  The prize is three million dollars.  As if this whole thing isn't nerve-racking enough, you also have wealthy businessmen betting on who will survive the game.

This movie looks like a great thriller.  I can't imagine the tension that would fill the scenes where the men are told to shoot.  

In the trailer alone they're shaking and whimpering, which makes me wonder—what kind of a man would sign up for a competition like this?  I can understand that some people would need money, but I don't know of anyone desperate enough to kill another man or be killed just to get their hands on some.  

I also have no idea how something like this could go on.  It's obviously a recurring thing if they have a pool of people to bet on it.  Someone would have to slip up with the disposing of the bodies and get found out by the police it seems like.  I guess that's why they check the men for surveillance.  

All in all, I think this looks like a good movie.  They've done a great job of filling the cast with just enough recognizable actors to counteract all of the relatively unknown ones.  

Half of the reason I want to see this film is because Mickey Rourke plays a contestant of this game, although he's been put in against his will.  

This has enough suspense, thrills, violence and real-world creepiness to look like a hit.  

I've never really heard of a movie with this concept before, and I'm excited to see how it all turns out.