I think I saw this last year. I think I liked it. Let’s see how bad my memory is.
We start off at this gala of sorts and a lady says that night’s honored guest is Prof. Solomon. So he gets a nice applause. He reads some poetry that is quite foul, lots of shit and even the word twat. The crowd is aghast. He apologizes as the lady tries getting off stage. He then cuts her finger off. Security asks him to raise his hands, but his phone is ringing and he tells the guard not to shoot so he can get his phone that is playing circus music. Well, needless to say, the guard shoots, and we roll credits. Ron Perlman is in this as a detective. I’m already happy.
We are now in New Orleans. We hear somebody going through voicemails, and he is clearly in debt and is on the verge of his power being shut off. This meek white dude has a pregnant black, soon to be wife. He is getting interviewed for a promotion. Instead, he gets fired, and he had more sales than ever last month. His boss is pissed that he didn’t take advantage of an old lady who only needed the silver plan and not the gold plan. We find out that this dude’s brother is mentally ill and is living with him that he can barely afford to keep around. His name is Elliot. The boss says that everything he sucks at work will make him a lousy husband and father. Sooo yeah, he is fired.
He is breaking the news to his brother who may have to go back to the mental asylum because he is terribly afraid of going back there, and makes his brother promise not to send him back. Elliot’s dad had a notice of eviction. So he says that he will have to move in with his son. His dad despises Shelby, the girlfriend, probably because he’s racist. His brother Michael talks a lot, lots of remembering this or that type talk. We know that their mom is dead and their dad got meaner after and that’s also when he started making his money. Sounds right. Elliot is at a stoplight, it just stays red, and there is a fly in his car driving him crazy.
He hears a phone ring and it is the same circus music from the old guy’s phone. A guy knows his name and gives him the chance to compete on a game show. Elliot thinks that this is a joke, but this guy knows about his past, as well as knowing that his father is moving. The caller says that he knows about the fly. His first challenge is to swat the fly and he will get a thousand dollars to his bank account. He is looking around and sees nobody. He gets a callback and is told to swallow the fly and he will get the exact amount of money that Shelby owes on her credit card. He goes home and sees that the thousand dollars were deposited. Shelby is asleep. He has the fly in a tissue and puts it in his mouth, and he got $3,662 credited to his account, they can see him in his house. Nice. He can become a very rich man if he completes the 13 challenges. If he completes challenge 13, and the last person won 6.2 million. He can lose if he tells anybody or if they interfere at all in his game. If he fails to complete any tasks, he will lose the money. He agrees.
The voice wants him to step forward and say that he will dance with the golden toad. He also slammed the door in Shelby’s face because he has to be alone when he talks to the guy. This chick is hotter than you’d think that he’d get. Elliot and Shelby are having like a little picnic with her parents. He gets the call, so he gets up. The voice wants him to make a child cry for $5000, and he only has 5 minutes to do it. Haha. So now he is looking for kids, probably a kid unattended to by an adult would make the most sense. He spots a little girl. He tells her that her mommy doesn’t love her and that a man from the orphanage is going to take her away, and he says because of what she did. She cries and runs away. The girl’s mom throws a garbage receptacle at the windshield as him and Shelby leave and she is yelling, so Shelby starts yelling and he drives off. Terrific.
They go to church, and his dad is there. He gets the call. This is for 10G’s. There’s a nativity scene handcrafted by blind children. He has to steal it. Shelby gets the dad and he is telling her about how the pressure of dealing with everything will be too much. He asks her to help him with his zipper. Haha, perverted old dude. Oh, Elliot has to set the nativity scene on fire. He gets the 10G’s, but he accidentally set some curtains on fire nearby. The dad is telling Shelby about his drinking problems and he was just too busy to deal with the boys. The fire is spreading and the fire extinguisher stopped working. He pulls the fire alarm switch and gets Shelby and his dad out of there.
He gets a call, and when he wants to start challenge 5, he has to follow a homeless guy. Elliot tells her that he will be back in 2 hours. She is asking lots of questions, getting worried about cold feet. There’s Ron Perlman. Perlman sticks his tongue out at the little girl who Elliot made cry. There’s a wanted poster up and another guy tells Perlman about something weird. The homeless guy is in there and was offered an ostrich in exchange for his clothes and a shopping cart. Perlman naturally asks if he had an ostrich, and yes, he did. He also sweetened the deal by offering a thousand bucks. SO the little girl points at the poster and says that is the same guy. And now they found out that he’s the same guy who was involved with the church arson. Oh boy. They have video footage to review. Haha, there’s the ostrich! Perlman looks impressed.
Elliot gets another call while entering a house or building. He is wearing the homeless dude’s clothes. This 6th challenge is for 50 grand. He is to take this old dude in an upstairs apartment out for a cup of coffee and go to a specific diner and be there by 4. Easy, right? The guy’s name is Mr. Shaw. He knocks, but no answer. He walks in, a record is playing. On the wall is says “happy?” He sees nobody. He finds him in a bathtub and he has committed suicide. He gets another call, and Elliot accuses the voice of killing, but clearly it was possibly suicide. The voice says that he has 2 paths, poverty, or the ability to provide for his brother, father, wife, and son. The voice says that Mr. Shaw takes his coffee black. So Elliot sprays a ton of like disinfectant. He gets him in a shopping cart and props him in it so it looks like he is riding and reading a book. Awesome. He brings him in the diner and sits him at a booth. This really beautiful waitress comes over with great eyes and wants to take the order. There’s like 3 minutes until 4. He orders the cup of coffee, but she says that in order to sit in the booth, you need to order food. So he orders a cheeseburger. She explains that he gets a side with that, so he rushes her and she is one of those overly friendly waitresses, gives her name, and he rudely brushes her off and says that his buddy needs the coffee and she looks taken aback. Those eyes, mmm. 4 cops come in and sit down at the booth behind him and they instantly are served coffee and we are under a minute to go. Elliot is looking at the coffee. 10 seconds to go. He grabs a cup and sets it down just in time. Well, you can imagine, the cop doesn’t take kindly to this. So the cop wants him to step outside, but Elliot notices this officer has a flask, so he tells him about the legalities and how they put him in programs if he were to be caught with it. The officer just shuts up. Elliot offers the coffee back, no takers, so he tells Mr. Shaw to drink up and he bounces out of there fast.
The phone rings. The voice says that they were so impressed with that, they are bypassing challenge 7. Unfortunately, his brother’s doctor was just informed that Michael would no longer be insured by an anonymous tip. The voice says that none of this matters if he wins. He is walking and sees a bus with a driver in a freaky clown costume and he opens up the door for Elliot, so Elliot goes.
Perlman is at the diner investigating the body. He interviews Jeanette the waitress. Some guy just talked to her. Perlman asks her who it was, and apparently he interviewed her about other things that may have happened. He gave her a phone number. Odd.
Elliot gets another call. The voice asks him to take out his library card, but he doesn’t have it on him. that’s right, it’s back at the diner where it’s been found. The voice says it won’t be long before they link it to Elliot and he will face 10 years prison for everything so far. But if he completes all 13 challenges, he is acquitted of everything, it’s a perk of winning. Perlman visits Vogler, the guy who talked to the waitress. Vogler gets out of his RV and is acting weird and walking away very frightened almost. He takes off and chains a fenced gate shut. I recognize Vogler, it’s Otis from season 2 of the Walking Dead. Anyway, Vogler doesn’t trust Perlman. Perlman says that he isn’t there to arrest him. Vogler doesn’t trust him. Vogler says that they probably have cops working for them. Vogler says that if he is who he says he is, to not hesitate to blow his guy’s brains out, I assume he means Elliot. He takes off. Perlman goes in the RV and there is a weird map, and something says huge boobs, there are questions about whether the church is involved, how succession works, how the game began in Rome. Well, this is interesting. How they monitor is another question.
So Elliot is dropped off at this motel that looks fairly empty. He goes to room 8. The key is in the door and the tag on the ring is weird. A guy is sitting in a chair with an empty chair next to him, and a nightstand lamp just sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. This guy is very nervous. A very pretty girl comes in, with a nurse outfit on. This guy asks if this is his fantasy, and Elliot is clueless. The guy asks him if he went to Holmes school, and Elliot says yeah. This guy knows him, he is John Witter. The girl has a suitcase. She lays down plastic on the floor. Witter says that he was in real estate for awhile and made good money doing it. She has some tools, like a saw. Then the phone rings. Apparently John and his brother used to be dicks to Elliot in middle school. So challenge 8, for 100 grand, he has to amputate John’s right arm, below the elbow. Solid. Elliot says no way. If he says no, then he foregoes all of the money so far. The voice says that John has agreed to this procedure, so Elliot asks him and John says yes, just to get on with it. Well, that’s fair game I guess.
John is still awake. Elliot asks about it, but he was given local anesthetic. John gets pissed about Elliot pussying out and starts talking shit about why they did the things to him in school. His brother pissed on Elliot’s brother’s face apparently. Damn. Elliot goes for it. Oh my. That was bloody awesome. Elliot asks where the car is. John wants Elliot to call his brother. Elliot drives him to the hospital. He gives the nurse at the hospital a bag with the arm and ice. She says that they will need a report and Elliot just keeps walking. John’s brother is there and being a dick to the receptionist telling her to get off her fat fucking ass. Yup, he’s a nice gent. Elliot walks up to him and says that he will tell him what happened to his brother, and Elliot picks up a chair and smashes the brother in the face and knocks him down. There is a call for security. He breaks the chair over his back. Elliot introduces himself. He then gets a notification that he just got $250,000, so that had to be challenge 9 or 10 we have to assume. Elliot runs off and drives off in John’s car.
Shelby is all dressed up and it’s like the rehearsal dinner I think. And here comes Elliot. He is acting very confident. Elliot is a social butterfly and sees his brother there. Elliot checks the phone. The cops are at Elliot’s house and investigating and know that he is at the wedding rehearsal. So Perlman says that they should go.
The phone rings, and for challenge 10, he can make 500 grand. He has to wait til he gives the toast, then destroys the wedding hall while singing some song. He has to break 75% of the ceramic stuff and he has to piss on one of the centerpieces. Oh, this oughtta be good. Elliot is so out of it. Poor guy is so nervous. He swears to Shelby that he will do anything to give her the life that she deserves. The cops show up and talk to Shelby’s dad. Apparently Michael exposed himself to a girl at some group. Michael says that he didn’t touch her, but he wanted to show it to her and he hasn’t had his pill in 3 days and he doesn’t want to go back to Bayview. Elliot tells Michael to get ready to run and go home and take his pill. Time for Elliot to make a spectacle of himself. This is hilarious. He uses a mic stand to do most of the work. He throws cupcakes at the cops. Elliot tells them to stay back, and he puts this big ass 2 prong fork up to his throat and tells them not to look. Shelby just stares on in disbelief. Elliot takes off and tries to barricade the door.
He gets the phone call. Challenge 11 is to open the door and surrender to the cops. More talk about the golden toad. He asks if this is punishment, or still part of the game, and the voice hangs up. So Elliot removes the chair and immediately gets tackled to the ground. He is being investigated. The guy asks him if things just got to him. He asks him if somebody ordered him to do these things. The guy asks him to tell him about the voice. Elliot is like, I didn’t say anything about the voice, how did you know. Uh oh. The guy thinks that Elliot is going crazy. The interrogator asks him what satisfaction he got from knocking the old lady downstairs, and Elliot denies it. And he gets accused of burning a Hindu shrine as well. There are so many false accusations, a bunch of shit that Elliot knows nothing about so he requests a lawyer. We see the RV was set on fire. Perlman says that he was just there. Perlman was a moment with Elliot. Elliot finds that his chair is broke, and he has a shard of metal I guess. As soon as the guy comes back in the room, he grabs him, steals his gun and starts to walk out using the guy as a hostage, and Perlman says that he doesn’t want to do that. Elliot says that he needs his phone back. He gets the phone back and it immediately starts ringing and he tells the voice that he needs a second. Haha.
So they get into a room, and he tells the Captain to handcuff himself to a cabinet and cover his ears while humming the Star-Spangled Banner. Elliot asks if there is another player and the voice says yes. He says that if this other player completes challenge 13 before Elliot does, then he gets all the money and Elliot gets 20 years. His opponent is on challenge 11. They had nothing to do with the chair supposedly. While talking to the voice, the captain swats at the gun, so the gun fires and shoots him in the foot. The other officers are wanting to come in, so this is giving them the go-ahead quintessentially. Elliot grabs a chair and needs to bust out the window. Of course, the phone rings and the phone is ringing in the dumpster, and Perlman has his gun aimed at Elliot. Elliot closes in on the phone and Perlman asks him if he thinks this is a game. Officers open fire on Elliot so he hops over a wooden fence.
Some guy is walking his dog and sees the cop cars. Elliot steals his phone. He screams out to whoever is watching so they can call him on that phone. Nothing. A lady walking the street towards Elliot. Elliot sees her and accused her of being his next challenge. He escorts her home and she is crying. Perlman finds Vogler at a bar. So Perlman asks him more questions. Perlman says that by him holding out info, he would be an accessory to a lot of charges.
So Vogler tells the story about how he came home one day, and his wife had left him, killed the dog and ate it. He says it was out of character and the game shows that anybody can be turned into a monster. So Elliot is at this lady’s house and says that she knows nothing about the game and starts apologizing. She holds up a finger as if to say, just a second. She asks him to hang up this clothesline that has come disconnected from her tiny little trailer. Will he is trying, and it is like the metal rope stuff. God, I sound like a dumbass. So he is pulling and it just isn’t stretching. He finally gets it and gets a text that says a million dollars has been deposited. He asks her if that’s it and she says no. She goes in the trailer and closes her door. Elliot sees a bunch of headlights coming his way, motorcycles. As he is walking in the street, he catches his throat on the line that he just put up that stretches across the street, to decapitate the bikers. Yikes. Nobody has helmets, nobody is stopping and Elliot can’t pull the stake out of the ground. He pulls it out just in time.
The one biker gets a call and says that was the easiest $100 he ever made, is there anything else that he can do. Elliot watches another guy further down the street putting up his own wire, and the bikers are coming back that way. Elliot tries to strop them, but they keep going and we have about 10 decapitated folks. The phone from the one biker rings, and it’s that ringtone. Elliot gets the phone. The voice says that he is a millionaire. Now it’s time to take questions from the audience. Elliot throws the phone down the street and says that he’s not playing anymore.
Perlman is looking over photos from Volger, and we see all kinds of pics, even one of the JFK assassination. Volger says that a few people control everything, and they get bored.
Elliot is by a group of people and hears the ringtone again, so he is pushing his way through the crowd. Somebody starts running, so Elliot chases him, and it’s at like a carnival. He tells whoever that they don’t have to do this, that they should quit. They try to run over Elliot. SO Elliot steals a vehicle and gives chase. Of course, a phone rings in the vehicle. The voice gives him hell for interfering in someone else’s game. Elliot says that he’s not playing. The Voice was saying the final challenge is worth 4 million I think. He sees the other truck parked on the street and they are at Willow Brook, where his dad lives or lived. So Elliot goes up the stairs. He goes to his dad’s apartment. His dad is eating and listening to headphones. His dad asked him what happened to him. The dad puts on the headphones again, and Elliot is inspecting the apartment. In comes Michael. Michael says “You’re here too?” Well, Michael is acting weird, nervous, not answering questions straight. Michael goes into a bag and Elliot asks what’s in the bag, and what is challenge 13. “To kill a family member”. Elliot tells him to go home and Michael is getting all pissed off accusing Elliot of trying to steal his victory, and we hear like a click in the bag, I assume a gun sound. Michael talks about how dad used to use the studded belt on him. Dad used to hit both of them.
Dad takes off his headphones and says that it warms his heart to see both of them taking initiative. Haha. Dad says the game ain’t what it used to be. Dad says that he won the game. He says 13 is the tough one. He says that their mother never wore a seat belt. Michael takes out the gun. Michael appears to be leaving. Dad says that he had everything before, and nothing after, and even if he had somebody telling him all of this stuff then, he wouldn’t have listened. There is one thing Dad can do for him. He can keep Elliot from winning. He slashes his own throat and kills himself. No shit.
Perlman is leaving with Vogler’s briefcase. Michael asks what they need to do now. Michael says that he’s done some bad things. He wants assurances because he is still a family member. So he says one of them could still win. Elliot asks him if he still wants to win, and Michael says no. Elliot goes to the door I think to leave, and Michael goes back in his bag and Elliot asks him what he is doing, and Elliot says that he needs his pills. Elliot shoots Michael. Michael wanted to buy him a wedding present. Just one time he wanted to win. And then Michael stabs Elliot in the belly then leg twice. Michael passes out, and we see Michael’s balance deplete to nothing and Elliot’s says 5.7 million.
Perlman is there. He sees Elliot. He goes to the car, and we see Vogler wrapped in plastic and bloody. Perlman has a gas container. He burns all of the documents and research of Vogler’s. He’s on the phone saying that all the evidence is gone and it’s like Hamlet in there. Then the door opens. It’s Elliot….with a gun. Perlman says that this is a violation of the game. He tells Elliot that nobody is after him anymore. Perlman says that they will take his money away. So he puts a bullet in Perlman’s head. Elliot is disqualified.
Shelby is on the phone with Elliot. She apparently went to bail him out but they have no record of his arrest. He tells her that he’s on his way home. She tells him that she got a call about eating a fly for a thousand bucks. He gets concerned, asks her what she said, and she says that she told them to fuck off. We see that she dumps the fly in the trash. She starts blathering on and Elliot has a big smile on his face.
End film.
This is a remake of a Thai movie, and I would like to check it out at some point, just for comparison sake. I like how this movie didn’t really allow itself much of a lull. They kept it interesting. I love the evil game show vibe, like The Running Man. I found the cast pretty decent. It’s not for everybody, but I walk away happy every time.
Final rating: 7.0, I think I have seen this 2-3 times now, so yeah
- RADiUS-TWC (presents)
- Dimension Films (presents)
- IM Global (presents)
- Automatik (as Automatik)
- Little Magic Films (in association with)
- Sahamongkol Film International (in association with)
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of: