District B13 (2004)
Directed by Pierre Morel
Set in the ghettos of Paris in 2010, an undercover cop and ex-thug try to infiltrate a gang in order to defuse a neutron bomb.
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What critics compared District B13 to
Director Mike Newell doesn't just steal from "Pirates" - he borrows the Pierre Morel stunts from "District B13" and an Arab whip-master who goes all the way back to the first Indiana Jones.
Sure, the constant careening off walls and pillars and rooftops is more District B13 than Disney, but when you’ve got the man who made Pirates of the Caribbean into an entertainment zombie (read: almost impossible to kill), and a video game basis to guide your spectacle, we should expect a little unrealistic bravura.
The big mystery at the film’s center shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve ever seen a Besson-directed or produced action movie (it shares certain themes with District B13, The Transporter 3 and Space Jail), which leaves a hole where the film’s tension or suspense should be.
I'm not talking about dramas that contain a scene or two of action but rather films fueled by their action -- films like "Hard-Boiled," "The Seven Samurai," "The Matrix," "District B13."
Comparable thrill-a-minute films like District B13 had at least a modicum of story development to fall back on, keeping the film moving forward while giving the audience enough of a breather to make the eventual return to martial arts insanity a welcome sight, but all The Raid seems to muster is a meaningful conversation or two before it’s back to basics.
If true, it's been a nice couple of years for Carpenter, whose influence has been felt in District B13 and that other recent masterpiece of apartment-building mayhem, Attack the Block.
Perhaps a better cinematic example would be the dystopian – and increasingly realistic – world portrayed in the Luc Besson-scripted District B13 and its wild, wild sequel, District 13: Ultimatum.
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Most disheartening of all is the presence of director Pierre Morel, whose first feature, District B13, bounced moviegoers across the auditorium with its nimble-footed incorporation of parkour into a crime drama.
And director Pierre Morel, once the action master of District B13 , can't keep all the scenes of set-piece violence from melting together into an under-lit puddle of mayhem.
Director Pierre Morel has proven that he knows his way around an effective action story with films like “District B13” and “ Taken .”
The film is directed by Pierre Morel, who peaked with District B13 years ago and has been aping himself ever since he hit it big with Taken.
Morel's parkour-driven 2004 film District B13 is often named as one of the best action movies of the young century, but none of that style is on display here.
Cinematographer Pierre Morel is responsible for some of the more masterful moments in the Transporter movies, as well as the sensitive Bernardo Bertolucci coming-of-age film The Dreamers .
Writer-director Luc Besson has long been a bang-bang auteur, churning out action flicks high-minded (“The Professional,” “La Femme Nikita”) and low (“The Transporter” series, “District B13”), and he previously dabbled with a trippy combination of forms with “The Fifth Element.”