Opening Day: 6 May 2010

Synopsis:

Two years have passed since elite police officer Damien Tomasso (Cyril Raffaelli) teamed up with reformed vigilante Leito (parkour originator David Belle) to save the notorious District 13, a racially charged ghetto populated by violent drug dealing gangs and vicious killers. Despite government promises to maintain order, the state of the district has deteriorated, and a group of corrupt cops and elected officials are conspiring to cause civil unrest in D13, looking for an excuse to raze the area and cash in on its redevelopment. Now Damian and Leito must join forces again, and use their mastery of martial arts and their unique physical skills to bring peace to the neighborhood by any means necessary... before a proposed nuclear air-strike wipes it off the map. With bone crunching fights and death defying leaps, this adrenaline charged sequel takes the groundbreaking parkour action from DISTRICT B13 to thrilling new heights.

Movie Review:

Like your action film topped with a lot of cheese? You can’t go wrong with Banlieue 13 - Ultimatum, the sequel to the 2004 action smash.

But you don’t have to watch the original to enjoy this one, because I, who didn’t watch the original, had a lot of fun. What makes this B-grade French import rib-tickling funny are the crude and sarcastic banter between the characters and the effortless parkour stunts. Even if the story takes some time to make sense, it more than makes up for it with a neatly-tied up coda that is hilarious in its insinuation of a cooperative between the president and the social outcasts.

In fact, the movie has one thing in common with those classic 80s Hong Kong action-comedies that we love – it doesn’t take itself too seriously. And for Banlieue 13, this works in its favour because everything else about it (and I mean the production values) is cheap. Admittedly, the action choreography leaves much to be desired, the acting is stilted, the cinematography is awful and the editing is choppy. But they are all redeemed by a smart, satirical script and breathtaking parkour stunts.

The movie opens promisingly with the buff Captain Damien Tomaso (played by a straight-faced and wooden Cyril Raffaelli) in drag, ambushing a group of drug peddlers in a Chinese restaurant. And seeing Tomaso going undercover in a cheongsam and seducing the drug lords is a hoot.

But I’m probably giving the actual movie more credit than it deserves here because I found the English dubbing, which come with heavy European accent, hilarious. This is probably unintended but it all adds to the movie’s tacky appeal. Not sure if that’s a strategy by the theatre distributor to up its tacky ante.

Banlieue 13 – Ultimatum is leaps and bounds (pun intended) above your average actioner, even though everything about it shouts B-grade. It’s a darn entertaining movie and makes for a perfect escapade from work on your weekday evenings, when all you want to do is laugh at people and just not use your brain.

Movie Rating:



(It’d be criminal to miss the English-dubbed version showing in theatres. Seriously)

Review by Adrian Sim