District B13 & District B13 Ultimatum
    
 
District B13
Director:  Pierre Morel
Year: 2004
Country: France
Rating: 7.0
These guys must have had Jackie Chan films injected into their bloodstream since they were children. They have all of his acrobatic moves down plus some stuff he might have had trouble doing in his youth. Not the martial arts part of him - that they are lacking in - but the way they move so gracefully. How easy they make it look - jumping through narrow windows, running across men's heads, leaping huge distances, climbing down buildings, running on top of cars headed towards them. It is a tour de force of human athleticism. Stuff I could never even imagine people doing and also wondering why anyone would try. Potential injuries stare you in the face. The human body was not meant for this sort of thing. People push the boundaries. When I roll out of bed in the morning without straining my back, I feel accomplished.



This is another French action film based primarily on parkour. In fact, one of the main leads is David Belle, who according to what I read is considered the founder of Parkour. He has one set piece near the beginning that is astonishing as he scampers, climbs, jumps, leaps about to escape a gang chasing him. Jackie would have applauded. It is Paris in 2010 - the future when the film was produced - and the government has built a wall - not to keep people out as we do - but to keep people in. There are walls around the worst ghettos in Paris - filled with immigrants, minorities, the poor, the unwanted and the vicious gangs that prey on them. Any form of law and order or government has vanished. Welcome to libertarianism. The strong are on top. In this case that is Taha (Bibi Naceri) a coke snorting psychopath who runs an army of thugs willing to kill for him.



Leito (Belle) is one of the few good guys in B13 and he steals a load of drugs from Taha in order to destroy it. They come looking for him. Lots of them loaded up with weapons and sadism. This is when that chase takes place - it really is amazing. Ten minutes of pure exhilaration. He escapes but Taha kidnaps his sister (Dany Verissimo-Petit) to be kept as an addicted sex slave but Leito rescues her and it seems they are safe when they get to the other side of the Wall but the corrupt cops return her to Taha and put Leito in jail.



It soon turns into a buddy film. In another large set piece we are introduced to Damien (Cyril Raffaelli - a karate and wushu expert) a cop who has gone undercover to infiltrate the gang of a drug dealer. In a terrific action sequence, he has to fight his way out of a gambling casino against hordes of bad guys and wiping them out by hand. Some crazy head banging stunts. He is then given a new mission. A nuclear bomb was stolen and has ended up in the hands of Taha. It is set to go off in 24-hours unless it is deactivated - and Damien has to do it. They give him a partner though. Leito is let out of jail. To save his sister and stop B13 from being blown up. Usual buddy shenanigans - they don't' like each other or trust each other to grudging respect. We have seen that a hundred times and though there are no more large set pieces there are plenty of small action moments. It runs 84 minutes and they cram a lot into that. There is a sequel that came five years later - District 13 Ultimatum.




District B13 - Ultimatum
Director:  Patrick Alessandrin
Year: 2009
Country: France
 Rating: 6.0
Luc Besson writes this script as the follow-up to his 2004 District 13 and seems to spend even less time making it sensible. But fortunately, he leaves the action choreography to the two stars of the film and that is why we are here. It digs deeper into the collected works of Jackie Chan to entertain us with some lovely, graceful parkour moves and adds more martial arts this time around.  It is three years since the last film but little has been improved in District B13. It is run by punk Warlords and everybody seems to have a gun and a grudge. Leito (David Belle) is still living there (though his sister from the first film never shows up) and seems to have the respect of all the gangs as he moves among them. In an early scene, the cops are after him and he does his parkour escape thing but not as ambitious as the chase scene in the original.



Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) shows up in a scene that is a near carbon copy of the one in the first film. He has infiltrated the gambling place of a big-shot drug dealer - this time in disguise as a female gogo dancer. He catches the dealers and sends them through the floor to the waiting cops below but then has to fight his way out carrying a Van Gogh.  When he gets home, he is framed by cops with a few parcels of cocaine and locked away. Something is amiss as cops are trying to start a civil war with the inhabitants of B13 and they want Damien out of the way. He is able to put in a call to Leito to come save him. This is a fine set-piece as the two of them break out with a ton of cops trying to stop them.



And then the film gets stupid and loses its way. They get back to B13 and organize the five gangs to stop the destruction that is planned for the district with bombs being dropped on all the high rises. A nice diverse group of gangs - black, Hispanic, Asian, white and grungy.  Nice to see Elodie Yung again - she was in the recently viewed Les Fils du Vent and is Electra in the Daredevil TV series. This time she is all tattooed up with a deadly ponytail. They all decide to take over the Command Center of the police - with no guns. But then neither do most of the cops so we get a lot of martial arts. Some nice action in the film that never really crosses into hard violence - aren't the French police allowed to carry guns? It just needed more time spent on creating a script that had more tension and didn't seem like a re-run of the first film but with less parkour and more fighting.