Dir. Pierre Morel, 2004, France, 85 mins
Cast: Cyril Raffaelli, David Belle, Tony d'Amario, Bib Naceri
Review by Carol Allen
I am not a great lover of action movies, not just because I dislike the often excessive violence, but because I usually find them dead boring. District 13 is, however, an exception. For a start, it has an interesting "near future" premise of a Paris where crime and conflict have got so out of control that the authorities have built a fortified wall round the ghetto district of the title, to contain the criminal elements and let them fight it out amongst themselves. It’s not unlike the premise of John Carpenter's Escape from New York, where the city has become an anarchic, high-security prison. Warlord of the ghetto is Taha (Naceri), who doesn't take kindly to the one good guy in the city, Leito (Belle), flushing a million Euros worth of his drugs down the toilet. In revenge, he kidnaps Leito's sister and turns her into a junkie, whom he leads round on a chain like a dog. Then there is Damien (Raffaelli), an undercover cop and master of disguise, who is sent into District 13 with the mission to make contact with Leito and, with his help, recover a "clean" weapon of mass destruction which has been stolen by Taha's gang.
Raffaelli and Belle are both stuntmen-turned-actors, Raffaelli being a former circus performer who is an expert in Chinese martial arts, and Belle the inventor of the street art known as "le parcour", which was first seen in England in a commercial featuring a young man leaping, jumping and flipping across the London rooftops in an effort to get home in time for his favourite television programme (obviously forgot to set the video!). Belle demonstrates this skill in a nail-biting sequence early in the film, where Leito is chased across the rooftops of the ghetto by Taha's men. There is then another long but totally engrossing sequence establishing Damien, which involves a massive fight and shoot-out in an illegal casino, where, single-handed, he fells a small army of villains. And once Damien gets into the ghetto and forces Leito to co-operate, the story develops into an unlikely “buddy” movie.
There's still plenty of truly spectacular action and indeed plenty of violence for the boys, but Belle and Raffaelli are not only stunningly athletic but they can act as well. And the story and dialogue are intelligent, cool, cynical and often amorally funny.
The film's produced and tightly co-written with Naceri by Luc Besson, and directed by cinematographer-turned-director Pierre Morel, who never allows the pace to slacken for a moment. Naceri is effectively slimy as Taha - there's one sequence involving him and a spread of cocaine which has to be a "hommage" to Al Pacino in Scarface - and there's an impressive performance from singer-turned-actor Tony d'Amario as Taha's lieutenant K2, a softly spoken giant of a man, who packs a lethal punch.
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