Review - District 13: Ultimatum

Review - District 13: Ultimatum

 

This film is the follow-up to Luc Besson’s original District 13, a movie about a bad-ass parkour guy from a French mega-ghetto and a good guy super-cop who gets mixed up with him and ends up helping him stop the bad guys from destroyed said ghetto.  The ghetto, of course, is the titular District 13.  While I enjoyed the first one to some degree (mainly because of all the parkour that was going on), this second installment was just a waste of time.

The new movie’s plot involves the same two bad-ass heroes running around, shooting guns, busting some serious martial arts moves and doing a bit of parkour.  Once again, bad guys want to destroy the ghetto, though this time the goal is to turn the rubble that remains into a real estate project to make tons of cash.  Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli) and Leito (David Belle) come together again to stop them.

My first complaint about the new film is not enough parkour!  The first one was full of awesome stunts and roof-top action.  This one has two good running scenes, and that’s about it.  Also, poor David Belle must be getting a little older, so the stunts don’t quite measure up to the first film.  Raffaelli is still an awesome fighter and his scenes are great to watch.  Over-blown, of course, like Besson (and filmmakers in general) is prone to do, but still great.

The next and biggest complaint is the way the movie ends.  Without spoiling it too much, the gangs, which are involved in drugs and other crimes, come together with happy feelings to make a huge change that makes everyone smile.  It was unrealistic to the point of boredom.  I just couldn’t deal with the film at this point.

If you want to see some decent fight scenes with good cinematography and a few cool parkour runs, this is an OK movie to watch.  Just don’t expect too much in the writing and you shouldn’t be too disappointed.