District 13: Ultimatum

"PARKOUR!!!" would have been a perfectly serviceable tagline for District 13: Ultimatum, but instead we are given...well...nothing.  Huh.  That's alright, though.  If you never got around to seeing the truly impressive physical stunt spectacular that is District B13, the filmmakers made a sequel that does more of the same, but with more explosions.  That might sound pretty dumb to you, but this is a French film, filled with subtitles; if you're not an Artsy Film sorta person, this might be a nice middle ground between you and your pretentious loved one.  It has all the foreignness of classic French New Wave, but with all the stupid action you demand from American Summer blockbusters.  Everybody wins!

District 13: Ultimatum takes place three years after the original District B13, which essentially means 2016/the ominously near future.  D13 (as the hep beatniks call it) remains a racially diverse ghetto that is ruled by gangs.  Leïto (David Belle) is still the king of his high-rise, despite not being a drug or weapons dealer and resembling that guy from How I Met Your Mother.  Nobody ever explains how he attained such a position of power, but "parkour" appears to be the answer.  After the events of District B13, it looked like D13 would be cleaned up (with Leïto's cooperation) by the government and made into a somewhat hospitable area; that never happened.  Now, somebody wants Leïto dead, for reasons that were lost to me.  Let's just assume he's being framed.  Meanwhile, supercop Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) is still a total badass, even when he's forced to go undercover as a sexy lady.  Correction: especially when he's a sexy lady.

L-R: Josh Radnor and a "your mother"

It turns out that there are corrupt government officials who want to see D13 wiped off the map, so they can build up the area from scratch --- minus the poor, disenfranchised inhabitants, of course.  You can probably guess what happens next: it's team-up time!  Leïto and Damien pool heir efforts in an attempt to ruin the bad guys' evil plan and do some totally bitchin' stunts. 

The acting in District 13: Ultimatum is hard to gauge because the subtitles are pretty awkward.  In some movies, that would be an insurmountable problem, but D13:U treats it as a mild inconvenience.  Of course, it helps that this movie doesn't rely on acting.  Instead, this is the French equivalent of a Jackie Chan movie, without the gags.  David Belle, founder of parkour, is definitely not much of an actor.  He does have some pretty effortless (and allegedly stuntman-free) action sequences, though:

And that's far from the best action scene in this movie.  That scene, which was basically one of the highlights in Casino Royale, was the point where you got up to get popcorn in D13:U.  The best stunts come from Cyril Raffaelli.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a good clip of Raffaelli in this movie, but he's done a ton of great work in a bunch of movies, so here's a clip of him in Live Free or Die Hard, because it was both awesome and because I never realized this was him until I started researching his work.

The acting is really negligible, outside of those two "actors," so I won't bother with the rest of the cast.  BUT, if you're the sort of person who wonders aloud when they see a recognizable actor, the chick with the hair-as-a-weapon was Elodie Yung, who had a brief part in the American version The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and might feature prominently in the next G.I. Joe movie.

It's like her character was inspired by Willow Smith

If District 13: Ultimatum was never going to be about the acting, then how about the direction?  Well, let's just say that director Patrick Alessandrin wisely chooses to play to his cast's strengths.

Like flying, for example

The dramatic scenes --- which take up too much of the first hour --- follow some impressively convoluted logic.  It's not a big deal, and it could definitely have been the subtitles, but this story is fairly ridiculous, and is treated with as much sincerity as the cast can muster.  The acting's not bad, but there just isn't a whole lot of it.  To be fair, there isn't much of a script to work with.  Luc Besson is the only credited writer for this movie and IMDb lists his contribution as merely "Scenario."  It's not too surprising that the characters are barely developed and devoid of interesting dialogue.

This is how the cast reacts when someone calls "LINE!"

Alessandrin did do a good job filming the action scenes, and that's really what District 13: Ultimatum is all about.  Some of the parkour bits were cooler in the original film, but I enjoyed the scenes that combined parkour and martial arts.  Another highlight was the indoor car chase sequence; I don't think I have ever seen a driving scene quite like that one.

Unfortunately, for every inspired action sequence, there are two that serve as filler.  Don't misunderstand me --- the physicality of the actors is extremely impressive.  And there are a lot of action scenes.  Not every action scene is very exciting, though.

This movie could have benefited from more martial arts and less parkour escapes.  Of course, it would have also been nice to have a better plot and script, too.  Do you need an example?  SPOILER ALERT: The heroes have beat the bad guys and saved District 13 from being bombed into the Paleolithic era.  So what do they do?  They order District 13 to be bombed into the Paleolithic era.  And the weirdest thing?  Both sides had exactly the same argument.  That is just reprehensibly dumb.

Dumber than even he looks

I guess the ultimate question is whether or not District 13: Ultimatum is worth your time.  Some of the action scenes are fun and truly unique.  For those moments, this is definitely worth a watch.  There are not enough of those scenes to make this a can't-miss movie, and that --- combined with the script and the acting --- detracts from the overall quality.  Definitely impressive for anyone interested in parkour or if you are impressed by actors doing their own stunts.  Definitely a pass for anyone looking for an action movie with a good story.

From Paris With Love

John Travolta has been nominated for two Oscars for Best Actor; these nominations accompanied his biggest successes, Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction.  I mention this because I appreciate Travolta in those movies.  At his best, Travolta exudes a casual cool that makes even a disco movie fun to watch.  I also mention this because it is hard to recognize that talent in most of his movies.  Travolta has a tendency to split his acting chops; either he is trying too hard to be serious, or he chews on scenery like a bad dog when he is trying to play a bad-ass.  From Paris With Love is definitely one of the latter occasions, and spraying him with water won't help.


James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is the personal aide to the US Ambassador in France, but he is secretly a low-level gopher for the CIA.  After several menial jobs, he is given a serious one; he is to help Charlie Wax (John Travolta) with whatever his mission is.  The mission never really gets much clearer than that, I'm afraid.  This is partly due to a poor script, and partly because Wax tends to lie to Reece.  At first, it appears to be a politically motivated series of drug busts, but Wax later claims that it has everything to do with terrorists.  I'm sure many terrorists get their money from drugs, but I doubt that the Asian mobs have many dealings with Islamic terrorists.  It assumes a level of cooperation between secretive brotherhoods that I find unlikely at best and insulting to my intelligence at worst.  Reece doesn't do a whole lot except react to Wax's bad-assery.  There are many instances of this, as Wax kills about thirty people in this movie, without pondering repercussions or worrying about innocents.  Wax isn't really a good guy so much as he is a weapon that has been sicced on his enemies.  As the movie progresses, Reece becomes more involved in the action and more confident in his life-or-death choices.  Eventually, he follows his own instincts instead of Wax's, and is proved right; that means that he is the only person between a group of people and death by terrorists.

If the story sounds vaguely familiar, it should.  This is just another slight tweak on the traditional buddy cop flick formula; as best exemplified in Lethal Weapon, there is one crazy-dangerous guy and one by-the-book type, only here the by-the-books type is also completely inexperienced.  Changing just that small experiential dynamic hurts this movie a lot.  Reece is relegated to doing next to nothing but complain for about an hour of the movie, while Wax does his thing.  If they had similar levels of experience (although, doesn't the boring cop usually have more experience?), then Reece could justify arguing with Wax, but he just keeps taking the craziness with a passivity that is similar to fraternity hazing.  Reece may not like what Wax is doing to/with him, but he's got to deal with it or else he'll never be part of the club.  This also has the side effect of making Wax's decisions seem like the only correct decisions.  There is a brief scene involving the French police and a bomb that tries to balance that a little, but it is nowhere near effective enough.

It's sad that this movie came from such excellent action movie stock.  Luc Besson is a great action movie writer, with credits ranging from Leon: The Professional to The Transporter, to Taken, to the best French language action movie ever, District 13.  Director Pierre Morel has only two other movie credits, but they are the excellent District 13 and Taken.  Given that information, I would assume this movie would be completely awesome.

Instead, we end up with a fairly generic template and John Travolta overacting.  I'm not complaining about that, mind you.  I actually enjoyed a decent amount of Travolta in this film.  If you paired him up with a suitable villain, like a drugged up Nicholas Cage or a 1990s Gary Oldman role, this movie could be a guilty pleasure.  Instead, nobody tries to match Travolta's energy and the story ends up feeling limp.  A big part of this is the fault of Jonathan Rhys Meyers.  He underacts in a movie that has absolutely zero use for subtlety, and his character's cleverness fails to jibe with his character's naivety.  That is partially the writer's fault, but his acting is so distinct between his clever self and his over-his-head-in-trouble self that it just detracts from the film as a whole.

There is, not surprisingly, a lot of action in this movie.  Some of it looks pretty good, I'll admit.  Most of it apparently caters to Travolta's age and fitness level, though.  I'm almost 100% certain that he does not have more than three seconds of continuous action footage in this movie.  It's edited well and looks pretty good, but after a while I noticed that there were no establishing shots or zoom outs to show that the actors actually worked out for their roles.  That's not a huge problem for me, but it stands in stark contrast with the parcour-crazy Besson/Morel collaboration, District 13.  That may be an unfair comparison, but I am very surprised that the same creative team was involved in both.

The advertisements for this DVD claim that this is the "coolest Travolta since Pulp Fiction."  That's a blatant lie.  His character in From Paris... is clearly more derivative of his "Yeah, ain't it cool" character from Broken Arrow than his Jackrabbit Slims-loving character from Pulp Fiction.  The sad thing is that Travolta is by far the best thing about this movie, despite some pretty lame lines and less than legit action sequences.  The plot here is poor and unnecessarily convoluted (I didn't even bother discussing that mess), but Travolta is entertaining enough to make it watchable.