District 13 (DVD Screening)

(Spoiler free)

I have had both of the District 13 movies for some time now, I just haven’t got round to watching them.  However this week I learnt that the new Paul Walker movie Brick Mansions is actually a remake of this french film.  As I knew I’d be wanting to see Brick Mansions I wanted to watch the original first so here is my review!

District 13 has a really simple storyline which is easy to follow but with a running time of only 81 minutes it would have had to be! I liked this though, meant you could properly get into the movie knowing that you were in for something short and snappy! Both of the leads in this movie did a great job, namely David Belle (creator of parkour) and Cyril Raffaelli.  The pair had great chemistry on screen and their characters worked brilliantly together, providing fantastic action sequences and humour throughout. This is a subtitled movie, however I think I am now used to reading subtitles after seeing a few movies like this.  This wouldn’t be a reason for anyone not to watch this movie as even it was your first experience of a subtitled film there was enough action that meant you weren’t reading all the time and as I have already said it is a short movie.

However despite all these great aspects of the movie, the best element of the film was easily the scenes involving parkour! The film begins with it’s strongest scene, in which Belle’s character Leito is chased down by gang members and the viewer gets to see just why David Belle created parkour! He is a complete machine at this and it was so cool to watch him do what he does best! Raffaelli gets to show off his moves quite soon after and it was great to see it used in combat rather than just chase sequences! However when the pair team up it is pretty cool, and if I had any complaint I would have liked to have seen more sequences with the pair working together. If you have seen Casino Royale, it was really like the opening scene of that but just the whole way through the movie and more badass! District 13 really was unreal and after watching both Raid movies I am developing a real interest for foreign films, the ones I have watched have been so good! Brick Mansions is going to have a tough job being as good as this!

BIGGEST FLAW – Wanted more parkour scenes with both the leads included

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT – The parkour scenes

Rating – 10/10