District B13 (2004)

I paid attention at this movie checking all the directed films of Philip Morel. He directed the first part of Taken - 96 Hours that got a great success at the box offices worldwide.The reviews here are right saying that the action scenes are well executed and worth seeing.In fact I saw last time these combat and chase scenes in a James Bond movie. The story is easy to follow and the running time of 82 minutes is perfect.If you like thriller of gangster / crime / action this is for you. I highly recommend you to see also the trilogy Taken with Liam Neeson.7/10 for solid popcorn entertainment.

This film tells the story of a man who has to seek revenge and save his sister from a criminal mastermind in an area that no police dares to enter. He gets help from a policeman who is given a mission to disable a bomb inside the same area."District 13" is a high adrenaline film. There's no time for fluffing around, the film gets right into mind boggling action. This is maintained throughout the film, as there exists no scene to introduce the setting, pace the rapid storyline or just giving viewers a chance to rest in general. The only pity is that I watched "Brick Mansions" first before watching this, and "Brick Mansions" is an almost identical remake.

The setting is the near future and the worst ghettos in Paris have been walled off to keep the inhabitants away from the rest of the city. A nuclear weapon ends up in the hands of a violent gang from this zone, leading to a cop and a ghetto vigilante being teamed together to go in and retrieve it.Produced by famous French director Luc Besson, District 13 shows his influence. It's a heavily stylised action movie, of which Besson was a bit of an exponent. But District 13 is hardly a carbon copy of his style of film-making because it has its own definite angle and personality. Its chief draw is undoubtedly the stunt and martial arts work. In these areas it truly excels. The main reason for this is that it has at its disposal two actor-stuntmen of considerable calibre. David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli are truly perfectly suited to this movie. They have the look, decent acting ability and mind-bogglingly impressive athletic prowess. They not only engage in martial arts but they run along walls, dive through tiny windows, somersault backwards through the air and jump building to building from concerning high peaks. Ultimately, they really are what the movie is all about.The story is pretty perfunctory and basic. Despite having some social commentary and an anti-government message it really is essentially mainly there to provide the basis of a kick-ass action movie. In some ways District 13 could be described as a combination between Escape from New York (1981) and Ong-Bak (2003); it has the basic plot set-up of the former with the athletic stunt work of the latter. Perhaps it loads its best moments into the opening half of the film and maybe it could have done with a more turbo-charged ending. But overall, it's a great bit of action cinema.

I have become a Luc Besson fan, two of my favorite movies are "Nikita" and "The Professional." While he did not direct this one, and was only the co-writer, it really looks and feels like a Luc Besson film. The two leads reminded me of a young Al Pacino and a slender Vin Diesel. Sometimes it isn't clear who the "bad guys" really are, but as in other Besson films, the good guys ultimately prevail. But there are many surprises along the way. Much of the "chase scene" action involves a technique called 'Parkour', where the person being chased uses whatever is already at his disposal to climb buildings and walls, or jump to rooftops. The person credited with inventing this technique is David Bell, and he has one of the two lead roles. He is the one who looks like a young Pacino. Both he and the other actor have a long careers also as stunt men, so all the action is real, and they are doing it.Cyril Raffaelli is Capt. Damien Tomaso of the Paris police force, with a reputation for being the best. He usually spends weeks, maybe even months, planning and executing, perhaps even establishing an elaborate false identity, to get close to the crooks to nab them.David Belle is Leïto, who grew up in an area called District B13, a housing project that has gotten so bad and out of hand with the criminal element, the city has built a wall around it with razor wire on top and heavily armed guards at the entrance. In a way it reminded me of how Manhattan Island had become in the movie "Escape From New York." There are a number of interesting things going on in the movie, but the big one involves a "clean bomb" that has been hijacked and ended up in District B13. Tomaso is given the quick assignment to sneak into the district and after locating the bomb, would put in a code to defuse it, to keep from killing 2Million people, but he has less than 24 hours. He ends up needing Leïto, and also in a move perhaps inspired by "Escape From New York", he is broken out of jail and told his sister is being held there, but for his help he can become a free man. A curiosity is little-know actress Dany Verissimo who plays Lola, the sister of Leïto. About the time this movie was being filmed, she was also breaking into the video industry as a porn star. She actually is a good choice for the role here. French with English subtitles, a very entertaining movie, watched it on streaming Netflix.SPOILERS: When the two men got into District B13, and when they tracked down the bomb, they called for the deactivation code. But they were deceived, it was in reality the 'activation' code, and Leïto was the one to realize it. The two men fought, Tomaso to get to the code keypad, Leïto to keep him away. At time 'zero' it did not explode. It turned out the police chief was trying to kill all those in District B13 because he had run out of ways to deal with the area and he was willing to sacrifice the two men in doing it, and many other innocents. But the men captured what amounted to his confession on video, with audio.Note: The 2014 movie "Brick Mansions" set in Detroit and starring Paul Walker was released a few months after Walker's death.