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Tagline: Welcome to District B13. Welcome to the future.

Pizza: Little Toni's

Preshow: None

PARKOUR BROTHERS

I love parkour, the same way I love BMX. It's skill. It's passion. It's practice. And I suppose at times, it's painful. Parkour is that "sport" of using things that exist in the everyday environment, like balconies, fire escapes, railings, and buildings themselves, as your personal gym/obstacle course. We've seen it in Bond's CASINO ROYALE and more heavily in the ONG-BAK franchise. DISTRICT B13 (2004) actor David Belle, who is credited with repopularizing parkour (its roots are 100 years old), calls it a "means of transportation." That's like saying a bullet is a way to transport lead.

Sometimes movies like DISTRICT B13 are mindless fun, filled with dazzling stunts, explosions, fights...and not much more. So I am happy to report that while B13 is a hell of a lot of fun, it's also by no means mindless. Sure, it's good guys vs bad guys, and there are a lot of guns and cursing and fighting; but this movie is lean and mean, and perhaps most importantly - smart.

Paris's most violent and lawless suburb, (in the movie, not in real life) is B13, fenced in in both directions by the powers that be. Heck, even the police precinct is closing up shop by order of the government. B13 is Hotel California, where you can check out but never leave. The year is 2013.

In one building, Leito (Belle) is sort of B13's Batman, secretly doing whatever he can to stop gang warfare and its territorial strangleholds and drug commerce. Without his shirt on, Leito looks a lot like me, all chiseled and tatted. He's in the process of destroying drug kingpin Taha's (Bibi Nacero, who also scripted along with Luc Besson) haul. In return, Taha has dispatched henchmen, led by a hulking man whose name, K2, is buzzed cut onto the back of his head (his name probably would have been Everest, but it wouldn't fit on his head). In this mildly predictable yet suspenseful and well-played scene, K2 and his squad fool and hurt some bodyguards, then go from room to room in Leito's building, cramming guns into innocent people's faces until someone spills Leito's room number. If only they'd looked for themselves, they would have seen Leito's name on the door in big letters (what a great moment).

Criminals always toy with others in movies, for their (ours, really) amusement. I mean, why not just kill them (you're going to anyway) and go upstairs? Why act out a little play about how you're not going to kill them, knowing it won't get you anything (info, money, the man you're after, etc.)? Anyway, this is where knowing parkour is a benefit, as our hero bounces off the walls doing the Leito shuffle, hurting some bad guys while escaping. It doesn't hurt that Leito is also a great fighter. (Actually, it probably does hurt.) Leito escapes from the bad men using his wits, agility and yeah, parkour. It's a spectacular escape scene, maybe the best in the movie. It's fun and smart, much like Leito himself.

And so we toggle from Taha to Leito, back to Taha, back to Leito and back to Taha as he kidnaps Lola, Leito's sister and real life cutie/ex-porn star Dany Verissimo. It's a high speed chess game featuring blood and bones instead of knights and pawns. Actually, that chess analogy isn't bad, as I suppose street gangs are made of knights and pawns.

And then, 20 minutes in, we're suddenly watching a different movie. Same feel, same violence, same choreography and music, just all different players. This time, an undercover cop, Damien (Cyril Raffeilli), must escape an impossible stream of henchmen...more than 30...I counted, many of which did some awfully good dying stunts. I wonder if they had a medic on set. Or an ambulance. Actually, no one was injured...badly.

I forgot to mention that Taha has stolen a nuclear bomb and supercop Damien is recruited to infiltrate B13 to deactivate it. But he'll need the help of someone who knows the territory. But who?

And so, Damien and Leito, who can both flit about the urban landscape like espressoed Spider-Men, team up to bring Taha down. And it sure is fun to watch. While disagreeing on the how, they are two of a kind, righteous and noble; one a cop pursuing liberty, one a citizen fighting against all things bad in the world (or more specifically, in his barrio). Damien's a "soldier, I've got a mission to do!" who "sees that laws are obeyed," while Leito's a street smart one-man army, whose mission is for the people.

B13 has a parade of testosterone charged characters on both sides of the law. Leito, Damien, Taha, K2, and a city (district, actually) full of henchmen. But there are two polar opposite characters here; Lola and Yeti. Leito's sister Lola, a cashier (how this devolved district manages to have normal commerce is a mystery), is a tough chick trapped in the body of a sex kitten. Yeti, a bear of a man that they keep chained up, is owned by Taha for the sole purpose of destroying humans with his bare hands. Yeti is played by maybe the only American cast member, Jeff Rudom, who sadly died last year.

I didn't want to gush about the stunts earlier, but I will now. Though I fear we take a lot of stunts for granted, so much in B13 was done without the use of CG or wires. These choreographed acrobatics include Leito swooping horizontally through a tiny window above a doorway and Damien leaping into a somersault and landing with his knee on the chest of his opponent who was laying on his back on a table. Why didn't he just smack him down without the somersault and a kick? Because the somersault/knee-land is the coolest thing ever. There's also stunts that find people running over cars, up guys' bodies, across people's faces, and shimmying up pipes and down poles. These guys are certainly in the gibbon family.

By the way, you also need to watch the Making Of/Behind the Scenes doc on the DVD. It's got some terrific footage of the stunts being rehearsed. What it also has is the two leads, somber and stoic in the movie, laughing and having a blast here. Watching them, I found myself laughing right along. It's joyous and beautiful. It's like watching Clint Eastwood laugh. The Making Of works on its own level and made me smile for 55 minutes. Total recommend.

2009 saw the release of a fun (but not nearly as smart) sequel, with the same actors playing Damien and Leito, called DISTRICT 13: ULTIMATUM. There's also a remake in the works called BRICK MANSIONS, set for release next year and featuring (at press time) Paul Walker and David Belle.

B13, a French movie (do not watch the dubbed version!) that I think was shot largely in Romania, was directed by action movie DP Pierre Morel. Fantastic job, especially for a first feature. Though I'm sure it helped to be surrounded by so much talent, like co-writer/producer (who hired Morel) Luc Besson, who himself has directed some great movies (THE PROFESSIONAL, LE FEMME NIKITA) and produced the mammothly overlooked thriller TELL NO ONE, as well as bedding hot women (Milla Jovovich, Anne "Nikita" Parillard, actress Maiwenn Le Besco when she was 16, and current wife, producer Virginia Silla). Besson has created a cottage industry for himself, making (sometimes just as producer) a spate of actioners like THE TRANSPORTER and Jet Li films, so B13 fit right in. I haven't seen a lot of the others, but now I want to. B13 opened my eyes.

DISTRICT B13 is self-aware in a good way, paying homages to Bruce Lee (there's a poster of him in Taha's warehouse) and SCARFACE (kingpin Taha bangs his desk in fury, sending cocaine clouds in the air, which his henchmen have to wipe off their clothes). It's as if they're telling us "we're having fun, so you should have fun with us." In the Making Of doc, someone tells us that "This movie is going to be badass." They're right. He also says, "It's no LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE." Right again.

Posted by Rich on July 14, 2012 at 10:00 AM | Permalink