Banlieue 13 (District B13)

Garret recommended this 2004 French action flick months ago but it just turned up on On Demand. If you saw the Daniel Craig Casino Royale last year, remember the opening sequence where Bond chases a man through an African city and that action style, known as Parkour, came from this movie and specifically from David Belle. When I saw that Luc Besson co-wrote the script there was no question but to watch it right away.

Belle co-stars in Banlieue 13 with Cyrill Rafaelli, Bibi Naceri and Dany Verissimo; Naceri co-wrote the script with Besson and Pierre Morel directed. Honestly, though the movie was subtitled, I could have enjoyed the movie nearly as much with no dialog since the plot was ridiculous, anti-government paranoia mashed up with a drugs gang, and only serves as a minimal framework from which the action sequences were hung.

In Paris three years from now (six after the picture was released) the government has erected walls around the worst crime districts of the city and cut off all services to those left within. Taha (Naceri), a crime boss, is turned over the police on the last day before they pull out completely by Leito (Belle) but the cops arrest Leito and turn his hot younger sister Lola (Verissimo) to Taha’s tender care. Somehow Taha’s crew captures a neutron bomb in transit, so the Feds send in Police Captain Tomaso (Rafaelli) with Leito, liberated from prison, as his guide. Taha has turned little sis into his drug-addled slave, so that’s his motivation.

Anyway, the real treat from this movie is, as I said, the action and so visual I’m not sure I can describe it well with a few words. Parkour is a stunning combination of gymnastics, running and a sort of boxing-oriented martial arts fighting style; you can watch this movie and easily be thinking that a lot of the more acrobatic moves are done with wires. But you’d be thinking wrong as everything was done by the performers.

Imagine a track meet, a bunch of sprinters who hate each other and instead of running around a gravel circle they race through and across buildings and alleys. They jump over bannisters to go up and down stairwells, barely break stride as they leap from rooftop to rooftop, run right onto and over cars coming straight at them. Throwing nasty punches and kicks, dodging trucks and scaling fences along the way. At full speed!

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