Review of Thirteen (2003) by Arth J — 21 Nov 2018

This wallop of family drama..

Thirteen.

Hardwicke's peeling of the nature in front of the screen shows much more skin than the audience has a habit to swallow. It is honest, perpetually generous in this gut wrenching dark drama where the storytelling is thoroughly compelling and electrifying. This wallop of family drama keeps you busy in its pop culture bubble whose every aspect is displayed in here. The narration fiddles with the characters aptly for you to feel the heat in the room. In fact, each tiny character is mapped accordingly for it to flow and be aware of the trajectory throughout the course. The camera work is a bit eerie, and it is steady in its own shaky way and on its entire run it can get hectic at times.

But with such a sharp and meticulous script, the execution is sincerely unapologetic and jaggedly on mark. It is also a sort of tale that demands performance since at certain point in the feature, the narration relies upon the silent pitches where nothing but performance speaks. Wood and Reed on their parallel role as opposite sides of the coin acting like one with various agendas, both of them controls the environment on the screen appropriately. But the real game changer would be Hunter at the realm of it.

Her performance makes you fall deep and deep in her bravura of work. She gazes with purity that cuts through all the hoax and distraction of the this flashy and blingy pop culture world. In fact her character too is the strongest of all in here, it oozes warmth and more importantly humane mistakes against all the bickerings and rifts. Thirteen is an every bit of cinema as far as the problems are concerned but piling up those in front of you creates an enormous amount of pressure for the solution to be equally challenging, and it is breathtaking.