District B13 (2004)

French Movie.

Both of the leads in the French action flick DISTRICT B13 practice parkour, a kind of urban gymnastics that looks a little like skateboarding without the skateboard, and the pleasure of this short frenetic film is watching the two lithe heroes leap through windows, run up walls, and jump off buildings. Like Jackie Chan, Cyril Raffaelli, and David Belle, both stuntmen-turned-leading-men perform their own acrobatic martial arts sans special effects or invisible wires, and the lo-fi fight sequences pack a gritty punch that is often missing in slick Hollywood fare.

The plot involves a futuristic France whe...
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re the worst ghettos have been walled off from the rest of society, their schools shut down, and the police force evacuated. The people in power simply want to ignore the plight of the disenfranchised, but this becomes difficult to do when the most notorious gang, led by the wild-eyed Taha (Bibi Naceri), gets its hands on a nuclear warhead and proceeds to demand a 20-million-Euro ransom, with the city of Paris as its hostage. Enter Damien (Raffaelli), a one-man police strike force, who has 24 hours to disarm the missile. To help him navigate the war zone of District B13, he springs a vigilante antihero, Leito (Belle), from jail. Leito has personal reasons for taking down the crime lord: Taha has turned Leito's adolescent sister into his junkie pet. As the ultra-athletic duo go up against Taha's gangster army, they repeatedly (and conveniently) lose their guns, and are forced to improvise, thrashing goons with steering wheels, cinder blocks, and their foreheads. The screenplay (written by Luc Besson, director of LA FEMME NIKITA) and the blunt political critique are a bit heavy-handed, but obviously that's beside the point. Lovers of action flicks could ignore the English subtitles completely and still relish the hyperkinetic beauty of the whip-quick combat.
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A nuclear weapon has been stolen by the most powerful gang in Paris' treacherous, walled-in ghetto, and it's up to a determined cop and a vigilante criminal in search of his sister to infiltrate the sector, save the girl, and get the bomb out of the bad guys' hands in an action-packed tale produced by Luc Besson and directed by cinematographer Pierre Morel. The year is 2010, and a massive wall has been erected to keep the violence of the Paris ghetto confined to District B13. Within these walls, gangs rules the streets and law enforcement is powerless. This time the gangs have gone too far, though, and when the a...
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uthorities realize that a nuclear weapon has been smuggled into the district, specially trained policeman and martial artist Damien is assigned the task of retrieving the weapon of mass destruction before Paris goes up in flames. He's not going to be able to do it on his own, though, and when Damien learns that breakaway bad guy Leïto's sister has been abducted by the very same gang, the pair soon forges a tentative partnership that merges the power of law enforcement with the anything-goes attitude of the criminal element.
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Parijs, 2010. Damien is een eliteagent bij de politie, gespecialiseerd in martial-arts en een kei in undercoverwerk. Op een dag krijgt hij de zwaarste klus van zijn carrière aangeboden: hij moet in een agressieve en levensgevaarlijke straatbende infiltreren om te achterhalen waar de leden een krachtige bom bewaren, die de hele stad in de as zou kunnen leggen.

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