“District B13”: Redefining Awesome

Film Review
‘B13’: Intense Action Film that
Also Makes a Social Statement

By Eamonn Rockwell (June 12, 2006)

When the average American thinks of France, he thinks of pastries, the Eiffel Tower and Germans marching in the tree-lined streets through the Champ Elysees. Besides being unfair stereotypes, these images will no longer be applicable once you’re finished getting your faced rocked off by Pierre Morel’s “District B13.”

Any thoughts you have about French people being chain-smoking sissies will be blown out of your head and onto the pavement of Dead-Stereotype Boulevard. This movie is so amazing that not giving it every Oscar available is nothing short of a war crime. Any attempt I can make at reviewing this movie will not even begin to illustrate a fraction of the sheer greatness that this film possesses. In fact, I am filled with shame at the fact that I am so limited in my ability to accurately describe this movie and how marvelous it is. Please do not stone me publicly for writing such a timid review. The pain that you can physically cause me will be miniscule to the pain I feel inside for not writing a good-enough review of this cinematic masterpiece.

The movie has a plot, which is actually important to the film, unlike every other action movie where there’s all style and no substance. Leave it to the French to cram obscene amounts of both into a genre that previously knew nothing of having both of these elements in a film. The plot is something like this: The year is 2010, and in the tradition of blocking from view the things that we don’t like to see, the rich and snobby French government has actually put a gigantic wall around the poor parts of France, and we get to see into the daily events of one citizen of the notoriously run-down B13. The main character, Leïto, lives in the ghetto and strives to make sure his sister Lola does not succumb to the evil gang. Leïto is ruining the gang’s business by stealing their drugs and then flushing them down the drain. It seems like there would be no escape if the gang came into his apartment and was about to apprehend him. This is where the genius of the director comes in. He lets the viewer assume that the main character is just a French stereotype and is going to surrender until WHAM! That was the sound of the main character busting heads and escaping evil using his skills in Parkour. Parkour is a French pseudo-sport where people “harmonize” with the surrounding structure and can run freely in it and not be stopped by little things like walls, windows, 15-foot gaps between buildings or gravity. Leïto is a difficult man to catch, mostly because he has the uncanny ability to kick down a door into someone’s face, swing his body across stairwells, run around on walls and make jumps that Evil Knievel himself probably couldn’t do on his trusty bike. Jackie Chan goes to sleep at night in a fit of jealousy because he desperately wishes he could be a young Parkour master, or at least he will if he hasn’t seen this movie yet. To get revenge for the drug bust, the gang kidnaps Leïto’s sister Lola, a spunky gal who doesn’t like being kidnapped while working at the grocery store, to flush him out in the open and end one of their problems once-and-for-all.

Meanwhile, another plot is brewing. A cunning undercover agent named Damien has just wrapped up a major drug bust and finished slamming pretty much everyone in France into the corners of card tables (where it hurts the most) when he is ordered on his most dangerous mission yet. A new kind of nuclear bomb (I vaguely recall something about protons and non-polluting explosions, it’s pretty complicated physics-wise) has been stolen, and there’s only one area of France where it could possibly be. Damien’s a good cop, but not street-smart, so he’ll need someone who knows B13 like the back of his hand. If this were an American movie, Chris Tucker would burst in through the door yelling something along the lines of “YOU CRAZY, CHIEF! I DON’T NEED NO HONKY MESSIN’ UP MY GROOVE!” but alas, French filmmakers are not nearly as stupid as American ones. Leïto and Damien are paired up and have 23 hours to stop the bomb from going off. However, the lines of who’s working for whom and what’s really going on become blurred in a way that will leave the audience blown away almost as much as all the heart-breaking action. I say heart-breaking because your heart will be beating so hard from the nonstop action and violence you see on the screen that your heart will break into millions of pieces; 18 million beats-per-minute is simply too much for a human heart to handle. Luckily, I have several horse-hearts stolen from Kentucky Derby losers, so I was able to handle it, but only barely.

The action in this movie will make you depressed at your own inability to flip through buildings and jump across rooftops. However, the best part is not only the action, not only the super-hot and possibly-underage leading lady, and not only the actual plot and storyline, but the fact that the film combines all three and still crams in social commentary is pure genius. The riots of Paris last summer are reflected in the burned-out cars/buildings that make up the district. The snooty upper-class and their desire to get rid of the poor, huddled masses, who I assume are yearning to breathe free, is taken to extremes that are only joked about. All social commentary aside, this movie is a cigarette-burn to the face to American directors. If all goes well, this epic piece of cinematic history will be a wake-up call to Hollywood, reminding them that most of their movies are stupid and that people can make a much better movie on a fraction of the budget if they just care about what they’re doing. This movie will blow you away like so many of the bad guys were blown away in a hail of gunfire. It’s got everything that matters and nothing that doesn’t. “District B13” has officially set the standard in what action movies will do for years to come. All of the stunts were real and involved no special effects. The two male leads do all of their own stunts, so there’s no need for a sissy actor to sit in a trailer while someone else does all the work. Go see this movie right now. If you have the cure for a deadly disease in each hand, drop them and go see this movie. I will personally accept the consequences, but that’s how good this movie is. Go see it.