Well, I'd warn you to avoid the review if you are worried about spoilers, but to be honest, there isn't anything all that earth shattering to reveal. A young roofer overhears some "mysterious" conversations, and after his employer overdoses, decides to take his place on a 'money making opportunity'. He's in need of money, well, not desperately, but just needs some (it is kind of hard to tell what motivates anyone in this movie, all the characters are such blanks -- ha ha, shooting blanks, get it?). He ends up at a sort of 'russian roulette competition' with a bunch of rich guys betting on who makes it to the end. It takes a slow 45 minutes to get to the "big secret", and then once it has been revealed, you are stuck with round after pointless round with little or no suspense (I mean, we know who's going to win, the number in the movie title?). I suppose it is meant to be bleak and existential (one of the 'coaches' gives his contestant a pep talk to that effect in one of the early rounds). I don't know what went wrong with this film, but I found myself fast forwarding through the last half. None of the characters engaged, the situation, once revealed, was tedious to sit through, and the outcome was mostly a foregone conclusion. A tacked on bleak ending put the final nail in the coffin of this forgettable movie.
Later in the evening, I was flipping channels, and came across "The Insider". A movie I've seen a couple times before, and I had no intention of watching the whole thing again, but I was struck by how tense and thrilling and full of paranoid menace they were able to convey, with a seemingly less thrilling premise (whether or not a 60 minutes interview will be aired about a smoking industry whistle blower). This film got it right. I ended up staying up til the wee hours riveted by the story, and trying to figure out what it was that made this movie work, and the one I'd tried to watch earlier in the evening fail so miserably to capture my attention. A lesson there somewhere, but I don't know what it is.