District 13: Ultimatum (2009)

Original title: Banlieue 13: Ultimatum

A couple of years after the first movie, not much has changed for the people of Banlieue 13. There might be a new President (Philippe Torreton) governing France, but the place is still cut off from the outside world by a large wall that makes moving in and out of the place akin to travelling to another country, and dominated by racially segregated gangs who – in absence of actual government – are the only form of order around.

Of our two heroes from the first film, Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) is still working as the the apparently only decent cop in Paris, while Leito (David Belle) seems to spend his time on more or less minor acts of violent resistance. They will team up again to thwart a conspiracy by evil secret services to provoke the President – who will turn out to actually be the kind of guy who firmly believes in the principles of the French constitution – into razing the Banlieue to the ground so an evil company can build some nice white, middle-class, apartments where it once stood.

Again written by Luc Besson and produced by good old EuropaCorp, this sequel directed by Patrick Alessandrin carries some of the hallmarks of the company’s – and therefore Besson’s - films. Apart from the tragic absence of some grizzled Hollywood veteran, this is very typical EC fare at least on the writing side: the script at times seems to unnecessarily go out of its way to be pretty darn dumb – there’s even a risible moment where the protagonists criticize a particularly idiotic bit of the bad guys’ plans instead of Besson just writing something more sensible –, physics do not work the way they do even in a semi-real world, and human psychology does not exist, not even in its action movie version. The action, on the other hand, is done with great verve by an experienced team, with nice scenes of Raffaelli kicking people in the faces and those of Belle doing his parkours thing in a pretty spectacular manner providing the film with a nice diversity in action styles. To change things up, there are also explosions, a feature fight for Elodie Yung (who pops in for the film’s last third when the Banlieue’s gangs of racial caricatures unite behind our heroes to kick evil awkwardly secret agent butt).

This time around, you can even admire the very fine achievements of actors, action choreographers and stunt teams, for – unlike an EC director like Olivier Megaton – Alessandrin apparently prefers to film and edit his action so the audience can actually see what’s going on, using the camera to enhance the action instead of obfuscating it (the latter tendency particularly frustrating in EuropaCorp movies where nobody involved in the stunts needs this sort of trick to obfuscate their failings).


Sure, the quality of the action doesn’t make the plot less forgettable, but at least the script does have its cartoonish heart in the right place (on the left, that is), preferring solidarity among the poor of all colours in ass-kicking, yet also showing an adorably dishonest believe in somebody in power actually caring about their purported principles. Or shall we call the latter an Utopian hope? Anyway, where more than a few other Besson scripts do annoy me quite a bit even after years and years of watching his output and even loving other parts of it, this one seems to so honestly revel in its cartoonishness, it is impossible for me not to be charmed by it. It does certainly build an entertaining base for the action, and what more can I ask of an action movie?