. Today will explain to you a crime, thriller film from 2010, titled Thirteen (13).
Spoilers ahead! This article contains spoilers, Take Care!In a building where lots of money changes hands, under a very peculiar light bulb, Vincent is holding a gun against a man’s head as the man points his own gun at him in return. As Vince waits for the right moment to shoot, he remembers how all this got started. Four days earlier, in Ohio, Vince, his mother, and his sisters agree to put up their house for sale so that they can pay for his father’s medical bills – he’s been in the hospital for a while because of an accident. Vince visits his dad every day before going to work – as an electrician, he works with a variety of clients, and today’s is Mr.
Harrison, who has received a mysterious letter and doesn’t know he has a cop parked across the street, taking pictures of him. When he tells his girlfriend about the letter, Vince overhears him saying it’ll bring him a lot of money. Later that day, Vince returns home to celebrate his youngest sister’s birthday and is amused by her wish of having her own lamb.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Jasper Baggies meets with some shady men that lend him two million dollars, expecting him to pay back three million in three days.
The next day, when Vince visits his dad at the hospital, the doctor tells him another operation will be needed, which of course will make the debt worse.
Afterward, Vince goes back to work at Mr. Harrison’s and overhears him telling a friend that this special job will give him a large amount of money in just one day. He did the same job in the past and managed to make it because of luck, but the memories haunt him. So after his friend is gone, Mr.
Harrison goes to his room wanting to have a good time but accidentally dies from an overdose. Sometime later, after the cops have asked all the important questions, Vince is allowed to go. But before he leaves, he stops by Mr. Harrison’s desk and steals the mysterious envelope, which has a train ticket for New York and a CPS receipt for pick up.
Vincent goes to the post office, gives his ID to the clerk when he asks for it, and in return, he gets a package with a phone, five hundred dollars, a key, and a letter with a spider logo and instructions that tell him to use the money for the hotel in New York and that he should only use the phone provided, he can’t take his own. He’ll later receive further instructions. Mr. Harrison’s girlfriend tells the police about the missing envelope, and when they go to check the post office, they find Vince’s name as the person that picked up Harrison’s package.
They send this information to Detective Mullane, who has been investigating the case behind those envelopes and orders them to follow Vince around. The next day, Vince puts on his best suit and takes the train to New York, unaware that a cop is following him. He makes it to the big city and stays in the hotel as the instructions said, and later in the middle of the night, he gets a call on his new phone. Pretending to be Harrison, Vince receives new instructions, which he follows to a tee the following day.
He goes to the Post Net store by Grand Central, uses the key to open a PO box, and finds a new envelope with another train ticket, a small piece of cork with the number thirteen on it, and even more instructions. His ticket is for Macomb, but he must get off one stop before. Later on the train, Vince is asked for his ticket by the inspector, who then tells the cops about Vince’s destination being Macomb. But since he gets off earlier, he manages to get some minutes of advantage on the cops.
The next step is to take a cab to the outskirts of town, where another car shows up after the taxi is gone. The driver is Jack, who shows Vince a piece of cork that also has the number thirteen on it. After Vince shows his own, Jack calls him over, takes the phone, and takes him away in the car. Mullane and the cops arrive seconds later after asking the cabbie to take them there, but it’s too late, there are no clues for them to follow.
Moments later, Jack takes Vince to an old shack in the middle of the forest. Another two men there give Vince new plain clothes to wear and inspect his old ones, getting sure he hasn’t hidden anything in them. They go as far as cutting off the heels of his shoes. Then Vince is driven to another location, this time a huge mansion filled with rich people.
There, Vince meets his patron Joe, who obviously can tell he isn’t Harrison. Vince explains that Harrison is dead and he took his place, and Joe sees no choice but to let him play if he doesn’t want to get in trouble with the other patrons. Meanwhile, downstairs, there are a lot of bets happening, all of them with high amounts of money. Jasper arrives and bets on the participant he patrons, number six, and Joe bets on Vince, who has been assigned number thirteen.
The competition everyone is betting on turns out to be Russian roulette: Vince is given a gun and he must stand in a circle with the other participants, who are all wearing black t-shirts with their numbers. Each man is given one bullet and, after making their barrels roll, they must point their gun at the person in front of them while they’re pointed at from behind. Then they must wait for the light bulb with the spider logo on it to light up, that’s the signal for them to shoot. Anyone that survives passes to the next round.
Vince is incredibly nervous and needs Jack’s help to load his gun. When the bulb finally lights up, a few men die, but the round isn’t over yet: Vince hasn’t shot his gun. Security comes over and threatens him with getting shot too if he doesn’t follow the rules, so Vince gathers as much strength as he has and finally fires his gun – thankfully, the guy in front of him survives. After the first round is done, Joe talks to Vince privately and tells him to man up.
Joe also begins taking bets from the patrons that lost their men, and Jack offers Vince some morphine, which he turns down. Meanwhile, Patrick Jefferson who is participant number seventeen, talks to his patron Jimmy, telling him he’ll pay him fifty times more if he gets him out of here. Jimmy doesn’t understand why Jefferson is participating in such a competition if he has so much money, so Jefferson tells him his story. He used to be in jail, until one night, they made him dress up to then lock him in a box that was shipped to this mansion.
Jefferson was in the box for whole two days, but Jimmy isn’t moved by this tale and says he can’t help. Jasper is also getting some extra bets on his participant, who happens to be his brother Ronald Lynn Baggies. Until very recently, Ronald had been in a mental institution, but Jasper took him out just so he could be his player. The second round begins, and this time, each gun will have two bullets in them.
Half of the circle dies, and Vince survives by sheer luck: the guy behind him didn’t even have time to shoot. There is a moment of surprise when number sixteen suddenly stands up again, but when the doctor checks his injuries, he declares him incapable of continuing, so security shoots him for good. Participant number eleven, Hans, has a mental breakdown so his patron Schlondorff tries to calm him down with a motivational speech, but it isn’t very helpful. Jefferson has another chat with Jimmy, telling him more about his past.
He went to prison for robbing a truck, but before he was captured, he hid the money somewhere safe. If he loses the competition, Jefferson wants Jimmy to find the money using a map he’s just drawn and he’ll be keeping in his pocket. Jimmy can keep half of the money if he sends the other half to Jefferson’s son, who is also in jail, and Jimmy accepts the deal. While collecting more bets, Jasper is having some flashbacks of his own.
Back when he took his brother out of the mental institution, Ronald stopped taking his medication, claiming he felt better without it. Now, however, he doesn’t look so well. When Jasper draws a number and learns Ronald will be pointing at thirteen, Ronalds throws an ashtray at Vince’s head and Jasper has to stop him from making a scene. Round three begins and the stress is taking a noticeable toll on the participants: Hans is given morphine to calm him down and send him to the game, and number three needs a chair to be able to participate at all.
Ronald provokes Vince into pushing him and even slaps him as well, but the host stops things before they escalate. In this round, each player will have three bullets. The players go through the usual steps and shoot, leaving only five alive: Vince, Jefferson, Ronald, number three, and number nine. This means the competition can enter the final stage of the game: the duel.
Five wrapped balls have been put on the table, two black and three white. The patrons of the remaining five players will each choose a ball and the two that get the black ones will be in the final duel while the other three are free to go. Jasper and Joe grab the black ones, which means Vince will be going against Ronald. Jasper, having the experienced player, receives most of the new bets, but Joe manages to convince Schlondorff to bet on Vince because their chance will be five to one, meaning much more money.
Jimmy informs Jefferson can collect his money and go. But when Jefferson gets distracted while changing back into his normal clothes, Jimmy surprises him from behind and tries to kill him. Thankfully, security finds them before the worst happens and reminds Jimmy survivors can’t be hurt. Jefferson curses Jimmy’s name and makes fun of him for believing tales as he takes out the piece of paper he had in his pocket and shows is blank.
Jimmy and the guard leave, and before he finishes changing, Jefferson reveals it was all a trick: the blank paper had been a decoy, but he still has the map on him as well and proceeds to burn it before finally leaving. Before the final round begins, Ronald snaps at Jasper, insulting him and asking for his share of money this time. He knows Jasper got money from their parents to take care of him and Jasper used it to put him in the mental institution, only taking him out to bring him to the game and never sharing what he wins. We go back to the beginning of the story as it’s time for the final duel, and each player is given three bullets.
Vince and Ronald look directly at each other as they point their guns, but when they shoot, neither of them falls a lucky round. For the next try, an extra bullet is added, and this time Ronald dies, meaning Vince has won the competition. Schlondorff celebrates having made such a risky bet and Jasper is upset over having lost his brother, but the one feeling the worst is Vince, who has to live with this death on his shoulders. The final prize Vince gets is one million eight hundred fifty thousand dollars, and the man that pays him calls him lucky because Ronald had won all his duels in the past.
Schlondorff and Joe congratulate him on his performance and offer him a ride to the train station, which Vince pretends to accept. But when he goes upstairs to pick up his stuff, he goes through the room filled with the participants and escapes the mansion through the window. Jack does notice he’s gone, but Joe doesn’t seem to care when he’s told. Vince makes it to the train station in the morning and he’s seen by the taxi driver that took him there the day before, which equals bad news: the driver calls the police and lets them know Vince’s location.
Luckily for him, Vince sees the police cars arrive from afar and hides his money bag inside a trash can before they catch him. Moments later, he’s taken to Mullane to be interrogated. The detective asks about the money, but Vince pretends he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and makes up a story on the spot. He explains he never made it to the competition because they noticed he wasn’t Harrison, so they dropped him in the middle of the forest to shoot him, but he ran away.
As proof, Vince shows Mullane his shoes, pretending they had lost their heels because of how hard he ran. Vincent is willing to identify their faces if Mullane ever catches these guys, but he can’t take the detective to the location they dropped him at because they had blindfolded him. Without having any more clues or evidence to chase, Mullane has no other choice but to let Vince go. After taking another cab to the station, Vince rushes back to the trash can only to find his bag is gone.
But then he notices all the trash bags at the back of the building, meaning they’ve been changed recently. Vince begins tearing the bags open and fortunately, he finds his money, but now he knows he can’t risk it again. So instead of traveling with the bag, he goes to the post office and puts all the money in a box that he sends to his family via registered mail.
Afterward, he calls his mom to warn her about the package so they can be sure there's someone in the house tomorrow when the mailman arrives, then he takes the train to New York. After staying the night in a hotel, Vince stops by the grocery store in the morning to buy some snacks. There, he sees a lamb plushie that reminds him of his sister and ends up paying one hundred bucks for it because the clerk is reluctant to sell it. Now is time to go home to Ohio. Vince boards his last train and Jasper follows him, making some chitchat as if this was a perfectly normal situation. When the train makes it to its first station, Jasper shoots Vince and steals the bag, running away with it because he thinks the weight of the big plushie is actually the money. Before dying, Vince swallows the post office receipt as he thinks about his family.
