A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

A different way of telling a story

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This English-language remake of the excellent DISTRICT 13 was once again made by the French, albeit shot in Canada this time around. It's pretty much a scene-for-scene remake of the original, although inevitably not as good for reasons which we shall come to. It's only as the running time goes on that crucial differences to the original come to light and unfortunately they're not improvements.First, let's get the good stuff listed. This is a short, snappy, action thriller, with plenty of shoot-outs and fight scenes to recommend it. The framing is often good and there's a fine sense of setting in the grubby, run-down locations. One of the highlights is the return of David Belle, playing the same character as he did in the original; it's just an annoyance that they decided to dub him rather than have him use his French accented English.Paul Walker is an odd but obvious choice for Cyril Raffaelli's character in the original, but he's no martial artist so the martial arts fights have been replaced by fist fights and a greater emphasis on car chases. Catalina Denis and Ayisha Issa are the requisite scantily-clad women who hang around to show off their bodies and little more is required of them than that.The problems are slight at first but begin to mount up as the narrative progresses. First off, the editing is horrendous. The early Parkour scenes are ruined by the refusal to shoot the stunts in single, fluid takes; there's always a dodgy edit halfway through, cutting to a different angle and lessening the impact. Sometimes one of Belle's jumps has three or four edits in it which ruins the whole flow of the thing. BRICK MANSIONS does a lot right, but it gets this crucial editing oh so wrong. I remember in the old days of Jackie Chan's 1980s movies that they sometimes wanted to capture a stunt from different angles, so they would just replay it, which was a much better way of doing it.The second problem is RZA, playing the drug dealer villain of the piece. RZA is one of those guys who really loves himself and the film-makers seem to love him too, so there's an unbelievable twist at the end which has to be seen to be believed. The ending is frankly laughable in this respect, and a far cry from the power of the original movie. It's the epitome of sanitised, PG-13 entertainment, and I could cry. At least the rest of the film is in the right spirit, so it's only the ending where it falls apart.

I just don't get why people don't like this movie. It's just so awesome that it feels bratty for someone to say it doesn't have a story when it most certainly has an epic one. Like I just mentioned the story here is great with an awesome twist at the end. Epic action scenes are what this movie has to offer. Watching David Belle do some epic parkour is worth your time and the Paul Walker/ David Belle interactions are good. Sure there's not that much else then an epic storyline and some awesome action scenes but when they're executed well there's nothing to complain about. A great heart warming ending ends the movie well. I would recommend Brick Mansions to people who are capable of giving it a chance.

In a dystopia Detroit, abandoned brick mansions left from better times now house only the most dangerous criminals. Unable to control the crime, the police constructed a containment wall around this area to protect the rest of the city. Undercover cop Damien Collier is determined to bring his father's killer, Tremaine to justice and every day is a battle against corruption. For Lino, every day is a fight to live an honest life. Their paths never should have crossed, but when Tremaine kidnaps Lino's girlfriend, Damien reluctantly accepts the help of the fearless ex-convict, and together they must stop a sinister plot to devastate the entire city.........The original film was a fun little throwaway movie that showcased the art of then fashionable parkour. Then Casino Royale did, then Die Hard 4.0 did, then Breaking and Entering did, and then there was a sequel to the original.So ten years later we get the star of the original, doing his thing he did ten years ago, but this time Besson has diluted his own script, made it for the teens, and poached Paul Walker to attract the Fast and Furious crowd.And it stinks from beginning to end. Walker looks embarrassed to be in the movie, like he's offending the franchise that kept his career going, RZA is awful, and Belle, yes he can do Parkour, but he can't act, and after twenty minutes of watching someone do something that became tiresome five years ago, you can tell the makers are clutching at straws.Fights are over choreographed, everybody seems to be medal winning athletes, and also to be trained by Bussell in the art of ballet.Plus it's extremely misogynistic in its portrayal of women. The two main female leads are scantily clad, one spends the majority tied up and becoming more and more sweaty, and the other spreads on the sexual tension between the two females to add some sort of perverted titillation. It offends more than it stimulates.Come the end, the makers ripped off the ending of every Fast and Furious movie, you know, where they are sitting there drinking beer and having fun.And to add insult to the injury there's a little epitaph for Walker after the film, and it just made me feel guilty for hating the film.But it soon passed. RIP Walker, but avoid this movie, which only had a theatrical release to cash in on the stars untimely death, which is low of the studio.Shame on you.

On my evening to myself, I thought I would watch Paul Walker's last film. I though, "Hey, it will probably be decent." I couldn't have been more wrong.This movie is awful. It's hard for me to concentrate and pinpoint which element is the worst over the feeling of how abhorrent it is. I'll make it quick because it's hardly worth my words.Collier is a apparently a bullet deflector. Nothing hits him when he is always dead center in the enemy's sights. So annoying.The car scenes were so shoddy, showing the speedometer registering at 80MPH when it's clear to see the vehicle is really going about 30. At one point Collier and the french guy crash into a red Jeep Cherokee going 80 and the van doesn't crunch an inch. Oh, and in the beginning when Collier crashes the Greek's car into the barrier (also going 80) he seems fine and dandy and the airbag didn't even go off. Tremayne's character is completely inconsistent, being such a stereotypical drug bully the entire movie until the end, where he has a sudden moral mid-life crisis and decides to run for mayor. Not to mention his acting is terrible, along with everyone else in this shipwreck. The acting is so flat I was bored out of my mind. The girlie fight scenes were just an excuse to get a lot of up-skirt camera shots with a side of bouncy cleavage.The story is drier than the Sahara, being a ho-hum revenge line with no morals ending in a turnaround propaganda-like, stick-it-to-the- man, power-to-the-people warm and fuzzy as Paul Walker drives through the streets waving to his thug buddies and blowing kisses to the schoolkids. The ONLY semblance of a redeeming factor was the parkour. Too bad it was ruined by cheesy side-by-side backflips and excessive use of slow-mo. Any director who uses slow-mo more than twice in a movie is immediately discredited in my book. Well look at that, I've spent twice as many words as I wanted to. This movie is trash; don't waste the electricity.