District B13

Over the past decade the Hong Kong/Asian Pulp film market has been edged out by the French studios, especially by Gaumont and the Luc Besson producers. The CRIMSON RIVERS series, and now DISTRICT B-13 being two striking examples of this. DISTRICT B-13 explodes off the screen at a breakneck pace with enough action, humor, and acrobatics to hold its own against anything from the East. The French style of martial arts, first really seen in BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF is used to great effect here, as well as enough firepower to thrill any fan of the heyday of the 60's and 70's Drive-in movies. This one gets my top rating for quality of production, soundtrack, story, acting, direction, script writing and cinematography. Watch it with any of John Woos' classics for a terrific double feature.

Kurt Lader of MTV described District B13 as: " blows past you like a hurricane." He wasn't kidding since when I watched it, before i knew it, the film was over! It went by so fast why? Because it was fully pact with tons of acrobatic fun charaters. The stunts are amazing and the cars look like they were stolen out of Fast and the Furious." In the films, Leito has to rescue his sister from the main gang and a cop has to find and defuse a bomb, all of which are in B13. They end up working together and the results are exciting as hell. The fight scenes are great and Leito's sister is one hot ass girl you would want to introduce to everyone you know. District B13 is a French film that never gets boring and is fun for all.

Well done action movie in a no-nonsense way that has good twists and everything you want in a modern kung fu cop movie.

If you like physical, non-CGI'ed stunts, this is a perfect way to spend a little under two hours. No one is taking home any awards for acting or script writing, but Raffaelli and Belle make a good buddy-flick team, and the stunts are incredible. Raffaelli's choreography is fluid and innovative, and Belle shows the viewer exactly why he's called Speed-Air-Man in France (say it fast, and you'll get the reference). To make a not-so-long story shorter: Do-gooding ghetto dweller (Leïto/David Belle) becomes a thorn in the side of the local gang lord (Taha/Bibi Naceri), and ends up thrown in jail because the cops are corrupt. Fast forward six months, and do-gooding cop (Damien/Cyril Raffaelli) needs an escort through the hazardous B13 to recover a stolen nuclear missle. Leïto initially prefers Damien drop dead, but reluctantly teams up with him to rescue Leïto's sister Lola who was taken by Taha six months before. Again, the plot is not the draw here; it's the action sequences that take center stage. To their credit, Bibi Naceri does an entertaining turn as the big baddie, there's ample comic relief from Tony D'Amario (who sadly passed away in 2005) as henchman #1, "K2," and Raffaelli and Belle accomplish a passable level of acting that took other action stars, for example Schwarzenegger, multiple films to achieve. Now that we've addressed the good, onto the bad: the audio dub on this movie is HORRIBLE (yes, the adjective is deserving of all caps). My preference is for subtitles anyway, but for no reason I can discern, Magnolia closed-captioned the dub instead of *translating* the french. Merde! Also, I couldn't care less about the hideous box cover, but the menus are loud, ugly and difficult to navigate. Silver lining? At least they properly subtitled the hour long making-of bonus feature. Should Magnolia release the 2009 sequel, I'm hoping that they scrap the audio dub altogether for a proper subtitling job and give us more extras with Raffaelli and Belle.

Both movies were great. The second film picked up exactly where the first one left off. Anyone who enjoys action films will enjoy these. It makes the movies all the better knowing that David Belle and Cyril (excuse me, can't spell his last name off the top of my head right now) both do all the stunts. David Belle started Parkour and Cyril is an expert martial artist. If some of the fight scenes he is in look vaguely like Jason Statham fights in the Transporter movies that is because he choreographed them and did some of the stunt work. All and all, enjoyable escapism.

It's A Awesome Movie

One of the best action adventure movies I have ever seen. Good story, sufficient surprises and plot twists. Faced paced action and well edited. The IMDB.com reviews say it all. The star actors are athletes displaying their abilities in the newest sport called, Parkour. It is a type of hybrid form of running and jumping in urban settings, inspired by the martial arts. All stunts were performed by the principal actors, themselves. The English dub track is intended for a British audience, but that is not too distracting. Cool music soundtrack that adds to the suspense. I bought this because I could not rent it. Glad I bought it. Worth the $30 or so.

Those people who loved director Pierre Morel's surprise 2009 smash Taken [Blu-ray ] would do well to check out his first movie DISTRICT B13, which is even more loaded with great action and stunts, plus is not as predictable. Unlike TAKEN, which takes about a third of its runtime to catch up to its title and is slow going until it does so, this film is a total rush from beginning to end and action fans will be pleased. Though the story is involving, you don't nessescarily need to understand all of the dialogue in order to understand what is going on because of its action-oriented nature, so people who are norally scared of forigen language movies shouldn't shy away from this particular title. If you do, you'll be missing a tremenously exciting romp which is refreshing because of its decided lack of much computer graphics in the action sequences. However, this Blu-ray release is extremely questionable because the only form of subtitles on this French film are closed captions for the hearing impared, which contain unintentionally hillarious descriptions of every sound effect and physical action in the movie in addition to a translation of the dialogue. This is doubtlessly helpful for customers who are hearing impared and should be included, but should not be the only option available because it gets fairly annoying very quickly for viewers who don't need that kind of description. Because the limited theatrical release featured a perfectly normal subtitle track, its exclusion here is both puzzling and highly bothrsome. The only other option for viewing the film is a poor English dub which serves as the default soundtrack (unless you are fluent in French and can leave the subtitles completely off.) Unfortunately, even with Pierre Morel's rising popularity, this is a older release now and I highly doubt it will be corrected. I assume the regular DVD version suffers from the same problem but can't confirm that because I have never seen it in that form. It's still a fun movie and very much worth watching if you can get past this issue, but be forwarned when making your purchasing choices. I definately watch the movie less than I would if it had a proper subtitle track.

Good Movie

Wrong zone - cannot read it without changing zone

What more can you say about this film, except I could not wait for the second (Ultimatum). Free running taken to it's extreme along with martial arts made this film so enjoyable to watch. It comes as an english version which is ok but I watched it again in it's original french and enjoyed it even more (maybe because I could follow the story line much better having already seen it in english), watching it in english the first time was very strange as the accents did not seem right for the characters, had they had french accents instead of ,I think they were predominately 'Cockney' I personally think the film would have worked better in english, I did'nt think it did. Story wise has been done before with slight differences in it's modern up to date outlook. Two main characters one born and brought up within the confines of the district, the other a paris cop both work together to bring down a corrupt government department. You could tell the story within 5 minutes of the film starting but the action is just so gripping it pulls you along and before you know it it is over. Again what more can I say. SUPERB

Was what I expected good story line but short on action it is French movie. The English version does not match the lips should be sub title instead..

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