nixsight

Banlieue 13 is an extremely stylish action movie that makes great use of it’s star David Belle’s parkour skills (he’s credited variously with founding and co-founding the movement), and is much more pace than logic driven.

I was always pretty dissapointed that Luc Besson had managed to drop the ball so completely when taking arguably the most 3D physical activity in the world and making the terribly flat Yamakasi. This is, after all, the man who made diving exciting in The Big Blue. It might be that I’m reading too much into his connection - after all, with these two more recent movies, Besson takes a production role rather than that of director. In which case, the director on B13 has a much better eye for action than that of Yamakasi.

There’s no point mentioning the largely functional plot, beyond stating that it’s “10 minutes into the future” timeframe basically allows contemporary locations with a lawless edge, and no need for justification when there are such over the top scenarios as running gun battles in the street. Basically, all plot concerns are arbitrary, as they’re only there to better allow Belle and his co-star, martial artist Cyril Raffaelli, to strut their stuff. The set-up, Belle as urban vigilante crusader meets Raffaelli as idealist gun-toting cop, is pure buddy action movie fare, and as such, and real depth to the plot could be considered pretentious, I suppose.

This is a perfectly respectable way of making action movies in Asia, but may jar a little in a western movie. In English speaking markets, we have a tendency to over-compensate, with over-wrought plotting and a kind of demented character longhand, where motivation is used in place of characterisation. The script in B13, as in many of Besson’s best movies, is quite shallow, textured rather than layered, and the different roles have interesting and broad character quirks that don’t really demand explanation.

It’s a short movie, too, at just under an hour and a half, and more than half of that is taken up by action set-pieces, which makes the whole thing, aided by pretty sharp editing, feel more like a really good pop single than a bloated action movie.