Saturday, January 13, 2018

Triskaidekaphilia: '13 Dead Men' (2003)

On the 13th of each month, I write about a movie whose title contains the number 13.

I didn't keep close count, but I am almost certain there are not 13 dead men in 13 Dead Men, the title of which apparently refers to 13 death row inmates who've exhausted all their appeals and are set to be executed imminently. This is explained in a single throwaway line, and the only one of the 13 who actually appears in the movie is Malachi (Ashley Tucker), who's been convicted of killing a cop but maintains his innocence throughout the movie. I couldn't tell if he was actually innocent of the cop-killing, but he was definitely not innocent of stealing millions of dollars worth of diamonds, which the prison's warden (David Weininger) is determined to take for himself. The warden and most of the guards keep devising new ways to torture Malachi so he will tell them where the diamonds are hidden before he's scheduled to be executed.

Also looking for the diamonds are Malachi's former partners, all of whom apparently escaped arrest, led by Santos (Lorenzo Lamas). Eventually they launch some sort of half-assed plan to break Malachi out of prison, which mostly involves getting themselves into the prison and then fighting all the guards until they find Malachi. Surprisingly, this plan mostly works, because Malachi is being held in the most poorly secured and guarded prison of all time, along with barely enough other inmates to make it to the movie's titular number. Nobody's goals in this movie are particularly coherent, but the diamonds are just a flimsy excuse for director and co-writer Art Camacho to stage an endless series of listless fight scenes.

Camacho is a veteran of straight-to-video action movies and a prolific stunt performer/coordinator, but the fight choreography in this movie is absolutely terrible. The fight scenes are less believable than professional wrestling matches, with punches and kicks that clearly land nowhere near their intended targets, and characters lumbering slowly around each other. Say what you will about Lorenzo Lamas, but he knows his way around a low-budget action movie, and his fights are the only ones in the entire movie that even come close to credible. His acting is another matter, but it's not like anyone in the cast (which also includes rapper Mystikal, who joins Lamas in being billed above actual main star Tucker) gives a good performance. At least Lamas seems to be having fun as the cynical badass who gets the hot girl, which is more than can be said for the mostly flat line deliveries from the rest of the cast.

Although there isn't any nudity, there are some gratuitously misogynistic sex scenes between the warden and his wife/assistant, which go overboard in establishing him as a sadistic asshole. The women in the movie are generally just tools to further the agendas of the macho male characters, whether that's the lone female guard who's basically in love with Malachi and helps him contact his associates (only to be brutally murdered by the other guards and the warden in a faked suicide); or the female member of the robbery crew who goes from Malachi's girlfriend to Santos' to a captive of the prison guards (although she does get to kick ass eventually); or the warden's poor mistreated spouse. It's less a failing of this particular movie than just standard-issue for this kind of movie in this era; nothing about 13 Dead Men sets it apart from other cheap straight-to-video action movies of the '00s. Even Lorenzo Lamas has done better.

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