The purest adrenaline rush of the summer, Pierre Morel’s District B13 (co-written by Luc Besson) is the type of enthusiastically frenzied, go-for-broke action flick that Michael Bay only dreams he could make. Self-consciously shallow with regards to its political subtext (about the haves’ fascistically nasty treatment of the have-nots), Morel’s whirling dervish directorial debut is primarily a breathtaking showcase for “parkour,” a balletic, martial arts-inspired sport (pioneered by star David Belle) in which enormous environmental obstacles are navigated via aggressive pogo-stick leaps. Considering the abundance of kinetic jumping, sliding and hand-to-hand-combat, the story – concerning an undercover super-cop (Cyril Raffaelli) and an ex-con (Belle) barreling through a walled-off, crime-infested section of 2010 Paris to stop a drug kingpin (Bibi Naceri) from detonating a bomb – turns out to be a mere afterthought, which is completely fine considering the sheer awesomeness of the propulsive physical pandemonium on display. In fact, the cartoonishness of both the film’s social commentary as well as its broad, vigorous performances (especially Naceri, who gets one fantastic Scarface-style face plunge into a desktop mound of cocaine) is perfectly in keeping with Morel’s whiplash mise-en-scène, which zips, zooms and zigzags in madcap sync with his exhilaratingly hyper-animated athletic combatants.
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