Luc Besson's slick and polished films were criticised for championing style over substance but with Besson, the style oozed so much cool it was hard not to like them. That used to be the case but the heady heights of The Big Blue, Nikita and Leon are a distant memory as Besson, looking more to the US rather than European cinema for inspiration, has lent his name to too many turkeys in recent years (The Fifth Element and Joan Of Arc) while scribing less than convincing actions movies (The Transporter and Taxi franchises).
In the script of District 13, Besson tries to merge La Haine's setting and politics with The Transporter 2's madcap action and almost pulls it off. Set in the Paris ghettos of 2010 where the police have walled up a dilapidated housing estate, leaving the gangsters to run amok inside, undercover cop Damien (Raffaelli) teams up with a former drug dealer Leito (Belle) to infiltrate the district and disarm a neutron bomb stolen by the estate's drug baron Taha (Naceri).The plan goes awry and the heroes find themselves chased by gun-totting lunatics through the estate while the bomb ticks its way to oblivion.
The Transporter director Morel kicks off proceedings with a long running battle that moves from an apartment, to the hallway, to the stairs, to the roofs, back inside, and does it all over again; boasting more hyper kinetic stunts than a Jackie Chan movie. Belle (I still don't know how he made it through that window), founder of Euro Asian sport called Parkour, which involves - you guessed it - running and fighting, displays his talents as if his life depended on it and can't advertise his new sport any better than he does here. It's a fast moving juggernaut of an action film that never lets up once but the fun of the opening scenes soon turn to the ridiculous as the stunts get ever more adventurous and lose any sense of reality. The plot tries to comment on the state of the housing estates in Paris and the Parisian politicians total contempt for the inhabitants inside but any point is lost in all the John Woo style double-gun play and karate kicks.
District 13, like Battle Royale, may awaken those younger viewers to foreign cinema who might have previously condemned it.
