Protector. Remember the last time those dudes stole your elephant? And shipped them to Australia? And all you did was file a police report? If you were an ass-kicking fighter named Kham, here's how it would have turned out. Tony Jaa stars. (NR) CGX, DP, J14, OF, RON, SP, STCH
13 Tzameti. (Not Rated) The artiest entry in the ever-growing torture-movie genre, this playfully wicked French thriller from twentysomething provocateur Gela Babluani (winner of the lion cub's prize at Venice) blasts its way into your brainpan with the help of black-and-white widescreen cinematography whose striking but smooth textures better suit the upwardly mobile auteur than his poor protagonist. Patching roofs in rural France to support his impoverished Georgian immigrant clan, Sébastian (played by the filmmaker's boyishly handsome little brother Georges) gets screwed out of a paycheck, then impulsively assumes another man's identity in pursuit of untold opportunity from a train ticket and a set of mysterious instructions that the wind literally blows his way. Narrative contrivance abounds well past the point when the kid learns that Fate has tapped him to play a most dangerous game, though Babluani's own sport-shooting advances one's heart rate enough to push logic aside. (No wonder an English-language remake is in the works — courtesy of Babluani himself.) As a brutal metaphor for the global economy, 13 Tzameti takes care of business; its assertion that desperate means require desperate measures naturally extends to the hair-trigger world of genre filmmaking, wherein young Babluani did what he had to do. (Rob Nelson)
