Review: District 13: Ultimatum

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District 13 Ultimatum

I'm going to jump in right here and admit that my expectations for District 13: Ultimatum were extremely low. I know one person who walked out of the film when it played Fantastic Fest last year, and I was warned that this movie wasn't going to be nearly as enjoyable as the first District 13 movie. So I figured I'd suffer the storyline and take pleasure from any good fight scenes or parkour scenes that might appear.

And you know, sometimes this is the way to watch a movie, expecting it to be not so hot. When it's less bad than you suspected, you end up with an enjoyable movie experience. Same thing happened to me at Live Free or Die Hard -- my husband, who was looking forward to a fun movie, felt disappointed, while I figured it would be awful and therefore liked any bits that weren't. District 13: Ultimatum is certainly better than Live Free or Die Hard, and at least there are no really stupid CGI effects. It's kind of like a 90-minute-long Burn Notice, but without the humorous supporting characters, bikinis and yogurt.

The sequel to District 13 takes place in Paris in 2016, several years after the first film. Despite optimism that District 13 would be incorporated into the rest of Paris, it's still a walled-off nest of criminals. Leito (David Belle) has returned to the district and is working undercover. His pal Damien (Cyril Rafaelli) is a police captain who routs out a gang of drug dealers on the "right" side of town the first time we see him in this film. And the new President is perhaps being led on by some corrupt folks in his administration who are tied in with the stereotypical bad guys of 21st century movies: real-estate developers. When you see a company name like "Harriburton" you know what's coming.

Like I said, this is the kind of story you expect from a weekly action TV show but it shouldn't matter because the point of a movie like District 13: Ultimatum is to provide plenty of cool fight scenes and action. The first District 13 movie was well-known for its parkour sequences -- in fact, David Belle is considered one of the founders of parkour. (Parkour = the cool run-and-jump action stuff in Casino Royale.) But despite the fact that it stars a major parkour expert, District 13: Ultimatum is weak on this type of action scene.

When the action scenes occur, they're fun to watch -- I liked one sequence where a Van Gogh was being used as a weapon -- but sometimes the movie gets caught up in the plot for long stretches, which is ridiculous and rather dull. Luc Besson wrote the screenplay and got a little too caught up in trying to make political statements. Fortunately we get one of the best "car in a building" scenes since The Blues Brothers or Freebie and the Bean, and a cool female crime warlord. Also, being Little Miss Squeamish, I appreciated the lack of blood -- mostly you just hear a lot of crunching noises and use your imagination.

District 13: Ultimatum will probably be better to watch on DVD than in theaters, because you can fast-forward past the dorky story elements, or go grab something out of the fridge, then come back in the room for the fun action scenes. Still, I wish there had been more parkour, and more scenes with the two leads, and less of the heavy-handed plot.