District B13 (Review)

The only thing 'out of control' here is the poster.

The only thing ‘out of control’ here is the poster.

It is 2010. France is in disarray, with the fabric of society crumbling, placing the country on the very edge of anarchy.

It is 2010. France is in disarray, with the fabric of society crumbling, placing the country on the very edge of anarchy.

Entire cities of ‘undesirable types’ have been walled off to protect the innocent and civilised. B13 is one such settlement.

Within the heavily armed walls drug use, crime and poverty, with only a token police force striving in vain to maintain a tenuous grip on order. It isn’t working. In reality an extremely nasty type named Taha runs all organised crime in the city, with a roving gang of cronies doing his bidding while wearing clothes that make them look as funky and streetwise as the teen boneheads that hang around outside your local KFC in a weekday afternoon. The leader of this crew is K2, a large (ok fat) gentleman who fears nothing or no-one… but Taha.

Taha wants Laito for taking some of his drugs. He sends K2 and the KFC kids to the run down building in which Laito lives/hides. But little do they know that Laito is the parkouriest of the parkour.

When they cannot catch the wall crawling, obstacle hurdling Laito they turn their attention to his younger, hotter, jailbaitier sister, the non-parkour practising Lola, who they take back to Taha as a consolation prize. Then when Laito dawdles a little – more accurately is waylaid by the cops – he straps a bomb to Lil Lola and threatens to kill thousands.

Wait. Wasn’t he pissed at some lost drugs a few minutes ago? That’s worth laying waste to a thousand potential customers?

Laito teams up with an undercover police officer named Captain Tomaso and now the real action starts.

While Laito is the parkour loving evasive type, Tomaso prefers a more direct approach and is quite the proficient martial arts exponent. The duo leap, punch, kick and wall-run all over the place as all manner of bad guys reach out for them in vain. The early parkour scene is a highlight, and while I am frankly all parkoured out lately, I discovered that the guy who plays Laito is actually the inventor of the technique. I guess the guy who actually invents it can use it all he wants. Unfortunately for me I have seen 37 films using parkour in the last 5 years, with practically every second action film incorporating it nowadays. So the impact might have been diminished somewhat by familiarity.

The final half of the film is action packed and strongly reminiscent of The Raid: Redemption, only with a more convoluted plot and extremely good – but not great – action scenes. It probably didn’t help that the DVD I rented had all the major players dubbed into English spoken by Irish and English actors, meaning even the English dub had me struggling to understand it at times due to the thick accents.

B13 is an efficient and eyecatching action flick that occasionally gets bogged down in its unnecessarily elaborate plot. It might not be as cutting edge now a decade on given its main hook has been diluted by countless imitations, but it remains worthy of checking out.

Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. Apparently there are more B13 films out there. After this one I might just seek them out.

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
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