Luc Besson is somehow becoming the new Roger Corman. Both men started their careers directing low budget genre pieces with smart original twists. Then each went on to higher profile genre pieces, which garnered more fans without losing much of their underground hipster cred, and now Besson, like Corman before him, has become primarily a talent scout, a producer, and a concept man whose name on the credits generally indicates, at the very least, a good time for the fans.
It’s not that Kiss of the Dragon or The Transporter or the original French version of Taxi were masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination, but they are all enjoyable works with a little more smarts and a lot more style than 90% of actioners with higher budgets and more impressive pedigrees.
Here in the States, we have finally been allowed to enjoy the Besson-produced parkour-as-martial-arts buddy picture Banlieue 13 (District B13 here in the USA) directed by Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog) and The Transporter cinematographer Pierre Morel. The picture is as trim and nimble as its stars (in a summer that has so far given us unwieldy and unconvincing action pictures) and all on an estimated budget of about $15 mil (or just over Halle Berry’s payday for Catwoman).
The plot of Banlieue 13 could be pitched at a Hollywood lunch meeting before the drink orders get to the bar. “It’s Ong-Bak meets Escape from New York meets 48 Hrs. in France!” That’s really about all there is to say about the picture as it stands. It’s a good hour and a half of what we back in the day called “Super-Action” flicks because that’s the section where Blockbuster kept the John Woo and Jackie Chan pictures.
While it’s a simple film, it’s also a high minded one, touching on angst in the projects, governmental apathy towards the lower classes, and martial arts philosophies. It’s the martial arts theory games that the film toys with that engaged me mentally the way that the kinetic action engaged me viscerally. It’s one of those rare western martial arts films that really seems not only to grasp what makes the genre work, but to truly transfer it to another culture.
Far too often, the western martial arts picture needs to base too much of the plot around the reasons why an easterner with martial arts skills has immigrated to the west, and then tries to get too much mileage from fish out of water antics, a la Shanghai Noon or Bulletproof Monk. Banlieue 13. on the other hand, primarily features parkour chases and parkour-styled fight scenes. Parkour is a physical discipline founded in France by Banlieue 13’s star David Belle.
I’m sure far too many people are thinking of skateboarding pictures like Gleaming the Cube or BMX flicks like RAD right now, and wondering how bad a movie starring Tony Hawk or David Mirra would be, but I would direct you elsewhere, to another physical discipline founder-turned-movie star, who makes a brief poster-based appearance in Banlieue 13: Bruce Lee. He not only developed Jeet Kune Do, but spoke brilliantly on the philosophy behind the movements and the mixing and fluidity of it all.
David Belle isn’t quite as smooth of an interview, but he certainly does have a philosophy behind the urban leaping and climbing that has mostly only been seen in the States in Nike ads and some Mtv bumps. According to Belle, it’s all about escape and freedom in an urban setting, with a focus on “being in the moment” and organically improvising with efficiency that would make your typical Second City teacher cream their shorts.
What’s amazing about Banlieue 13 is that this philosophy, which reclaims built up urban areas in a way that skateboarding only strives for, is actually explored in the text of the film itself. The picture has a 48 Hrs buddy cop set-up: Belle plays the loose cannon criminal, and stuntman Cyril Raffaelli plays the cop whose style is too “by the book.” There more than a few dialogue sequences, some that are a little too drawn out, discussing the difference of styles and, without literally naming it (at least in the subtitles that I was reading), espousing Parkour theory, both in movement and politically.
It should be noted that Banlieue 13 isn’t the first film to feature Parkour-styled action; Besson penned Yamakasi - Les Samouraïs Des Temps Modernes, which put the practitioners of the related style of Yamakasi in the role of the outlaw, while in B13 Belle plays a rebel. The nuances between the two roles were obviously not lost on Belle, who refused to act in Yamakasi for moral reasons. B13 also has sequences that resemble the nimble escape sequences of Jackie Chan’s urban everyman gets involved in craziness pictures like Rumble in the Bronx and Twin Dragons, as well as the recent Thai hit Ong-Bak.
While we’ve seen a few of these moves before on film, never has the spirit of the “Art of Movement” been embodied both physically and textually. The fight sequences feel as organic and improvised as the chases, which is precisely what proves how incredibly choreographed they are. A great fight sequence is just a great dance sequence that mimics combat instead of seduction, and B13 has some of the best we’ve seen in a long while.