District B13

Whatever happened to Luc Besson? After kick-starting his career with modish action films like Subway and La Femme Nikita, he has struggled to regain the audience good-will and positive critical reception granted him. The Fifth Element was a valiant misfire but The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc failed on almost every level and the less said about Arthur And The Invisibles the better.

He has spent a lot of his time producing recently, notably the Taxi and The Transporter films. All point to a man still in love with the action genre but unable to create a thrilling movie himself. A case in point is District B13, the latest feature to be written and produced by Besson and a film that purely exists for its action set pieces. In terms of plot and acting there is nothing there. The actors were not hired for their acting ability, they were hired because they are traceurs, otherwise known as practitioners of Parkour. Parkour, developed by David Belle, is a form of gravity-defying, high energy urban acrobatics which involves its participant getting from one point to another across and thru all manner of obstacles in the quickest way possible, by leaping from point to point or diving through unfeasibly small openings in a smooth and fluid movement that makes its practitioners seem to fly through air. Variants on this theme have appeared in advertising and video clips including Madonna’s Jump. Set in the narrative field and combined with martial arts it’s an adrenaline-charged ride unlike any other. It was later used to good effect in the 2006 Casino Royale but director Martin Campbell, who perhaps had seen this film, had the sense to limit it to one scene. Here, every action scene features at least one long chase sequence. When the film opens with Belle playing Leito on the run trying desperately to save his own skin this is genuinely thrilling but by the end of the film, repeated in one variant after another, it becomes a worn-out device.

Director Pierre Morell handles the action with aplomb but the sci-fi trappings of the film are ineffective. As the plot unfolds the prospect of a deliriously exciting take on John Carpenter’s Escape From New York is on the cards but the film soon descends into a clichéd gangster film with all the associated male posturing. A shame because the talent involved in the film and the novel style of action suggest what a trip to District B13 could have been.

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