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salut les mecs! Ello everyone. You may have thought cheesy dystopias were only going to happen in the near future of the "Etats-Unis" (USA) but prod. LUC BESSON and dir. PIERRE MOREL show us in a newish film that the near future is also coming soon to PARIS (Paris), and it's just as full of big action, big guns, big guys and big walls around big ghettos as anything you see in the American Cinema.
The English title, District B-13, incorporates the original, "Banlieu 13" ~ which in turn perhaps helps us to place this film within the fairly recent movement cinema de banlieu, said to be typified by La Haine (1995). (In fact, "la haine" is a key line in the film, so perhaps there's some reference and tribute intended there.) Anyway, "banlieu", though often translated as "suburb", seems more appropriately rendered in this case ("suburb" having dull/genteel connotations) as what the US would call "the projects" and what the UK would call "housing estates".
The plot is really so simple and ludicrous that it would barely sustain a single day's play in Judge Dredd The Role-Playing Game ~ the year is 2010 and "Leito", a fit, tattooed resident of the projects with his heart in the right place, is trying to keep his block clean amid drug deals and gang violence. "Taha", the banlieu boss, kidnaps Leito's little sister and retains her as some kind of distasteful sex/junkie pet. MEANWHILE, undercover cop Damien is busting some moves in a sequence so distinct from the story so far that I thought the movie was going to work like Sin City.
However, 20 minutes into the story it's all dovetailing and the cop teams up with the local hero to take down the boss ~ and the shadowy personages (eminences grises) behind the latest NUCLEAR THREAT to the entire banlieu.
Ho-hum! which screen is Superman showing on again? But "attendez", "mes amis". Did I mention "busting some moves" above. The... the "raison d'etre" of this film is its use of PARKOUR, or what we call "free running" (although experts will tell you there are significant distinctions between the two) ~ the technique, part extreme sport, part martial art, of ducking, vaulting and leaping around an urban environment what you might have seen in various places already: the 2003 documentary "Jump London", the 2002 BBC trailer "Rush Hour", various Nike and telephone commercials and apparently (a suivre) Casino Royale.
Far-fetched as it may be that not just the two protagonists but many of the enemy goons are "traceurs", or parkour experts, if you suspend your scepticism you will be rewarded with some spectacular sequences of physical effort and achievement: leaps from tower-block windows, dives through tiny spaces, spinning slomo kicks, rebounds off walls and ceilings, and vaults into the broad distance between buildings.
So the plot is somewhere between tired and absurd; Leito's sister is the kind of uncomfortable sexy-victim/hot-bitch character a roomful of teenage boys might brainstorm; the dialogue is full (in French) of chewy phrases I hadn't experienced since I read the translation of Dark Knight Returns in 1988 (flingue, flic, connard &c) and not always very well translated into English, but at 87 minutes it's well worth sitting through the rubbish bits just for the sustained parkour scenes, which are perhaps like nothing you've seen before in cinema.
Trailer on PARKOUR.net: by Traceurs, for Traceurs, here:
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