In association with

District 13 [2006]
from Momentum Pictures Home Ent
starring Cyril Raffaelli, Tony D'Amario, Dany Verissimo, Bibi Naceri, David Belle
directed by Pierre Morel

Features:

• Dubbed
• PAL

Editorial Review:

Both of the leads in the French action flick DISTRICT 13 practice parkour, a kind of urban gymnastics that looks a little like skateboarding without the skateboard, and the pleasure of this short frenetic film is watching the two lithe heroes leap through windows, run up walls, and jump off buildings. Like Jackie Chan, Cyril Raffaelli, and David Belle, both stuntmen-turned-leading-men perform their own acrobatic martial arts sans special effects or invisible wires, and the lo-fi fight sequences pack a gritty punch that is often missing in slick Hollywood fare. The plot involves a futuristic France where the worst ghettos have been walled off from the rest of society, their schools shut down, and the police force evacuated. The people in power simply want to ignore the plight of the disenfranchised, but this becomes difficult to do when the most notorious gang, led by the wild-eyed Taha (Bibi Naceri), gets its hands on a nuclear warhead and proceeds to demand a 20-million-Euro ransom, with the city of Paris as its hostage. Enter Damien (Raffaelli), a one-man police strike force, who has 24 hours to disarm the missile. To help him navigate the war zone of District 13, he springs a vigilante antihero, Leito (Belle), from jail. Leito has personal reasons for taking down the crime lord: Taha has turned Leito's adolescent sister into his junkie pet. As the ultra-athletic duo go up against Taha's gangster army, they repeatedly (and conveniently) lose their guns, and are forced to improvise, thrashing goons with steering wheels, cinder blocks, and their foreheads. Lovers of action flicks could ignore the English subtitles completely and still relish the hyperkinetic beauty of the whip-quick combat.

It's 2013 and Parisian ghetto District 13 has become so dangerous the authorities have walled it in and left its inhabitants to rot. But when neutron weapon is stolen by a ghetto gangmember, enter super-cop Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) and wrongly-imprisoned ghetto-dweller Leito (David Belle). They're both hard-as-nails and experts in Le Parkour, an extreme sport involving wall scaling, roof-running and building-to-building leaping... From the pen of multi-talented action maestro Luc Besson (director of Leon, producer of The Transporter) comes a full throttle action-thriller with physical thrills and spills to rival even Ong-Bak!

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• Very enjoyable!
  I really enjoyed this action packed French film.The plot is secondary,but the action is first class.A drug crime-lord holds the city of Paris to ransom,threatening to detonate a stolen nuclear warhead.In some ways,it reflects Escape from New York.The crime ridden areas of Paris are walled off from everybody else.Two men team up reluctantly to try and stop Taha,(the big bad guy!) from blowing Paris up.One of the good guys is a cop,the second man only wishes to rescue his kidnapped sister(sexy Dany... more info

• Jaw dropping
  Ok...so the plot ain't the best but the whole thing oozes style and, dare I say it, I love the original french audio.
  If you don't do subtitles then you might want to give it a miss as the English language voice overs are really poor.
  One of the best 10 minute openers EVER.
  

• ace!
  i'm not usuaslly into kung fo type movies with a lot of high kicking and smashing in of people's heads with a leg or fist, but this film surprised me!!In some parts funny but in most parts bloody, this was a tense action packed film that i would actually watch again!!!only downhill thing and therefore lack of a star was the awful dubbing on the dvd, it made the actors look comical when they weren't supposed to!!

• A very pleasant surprise
  After seeing Casino Royale and loving the Parkour (a.k.a. free-running) chase scene near the beginning, I went on to the IMDb and searched for other films featuring Parkour. The selection was quite limited but one of them was this, District 13. When I saw that it was co-written by Luc Besson I immediately added it to my rental list.
  I watched it today and was very pleasantly surprised. The last time I was unexpectedly impressed by a movie like this was "Equilibrium". The storyline is actually quite... more info

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