“Brick Mansions” is “Banlieue 13/District 13” for the illiterate and unworldly

Click the poster to see it at full size.

In 2004, a French action flick called Banlieue 13 — “Suburb 13” — was released. It was written and produced by Luc Besson, who’s brought numerous thrillers to the big screen, some of which you may have even seen:

• Subway, a film that’s greatly underappreciated on this side of the pond
• La Femme Nikita, which became the inspiration for the Nikita TV series
• Leon: The Professional, which introduced us to Natalie Portman
• Taxi, which got remade into a less interesting film with Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah
• The Fifth Element, which you’ve probably seen
• The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
• Kiss of the Dragon, a.k.a. Jet Lee kicks Paris’ ass
• The Transporter
• Taken
• Hitman
• Colombiana

Banlieue 13, which in English became District 13, became the parkour thriller movie, largely for this sequence:

Ten years later, a trailer for a new movie hitting the big screen in a couple of months is making the rounds. It’s for a film called Brick Mansions, it’s produced by Luc Besson, and there’s a scene and even a guy in it that seems…familiar:

It looks as though Besson simply asked “Why mess with success?”, brought back David Belle, who played the protagonist in Banlieue 13, to do what seems to be a shot-for-shot remake of that famous parkour sequence.

The problem is that he’s dealing with this as his target audience:

They could simply watch Banlieue 13, but these factors are holding them back:

• It takes place in a country other than America, and that country is being portrayed not as an exotic backdrop or enemy hideout, but as a place where people actually live and call home. Too foreign.
• It’s in French. It is subtitled, but they want to be entertained, not to read.
• They can’t relate to a French protagonist. They need an American one.

There’s also the matter of Besson standing to make some decent coin and save work by re-doing his own ten-year-old film. He knows what side his baguette’s buttered on, so he gave it an American setting, and made it a buddy film with Paul Walker as the “familiar character we can relate to”. Since this was one of Paul Walker’s last film appearances before his James Dean-ish death, it’s sure to bring his fans, now infected with “necrofilmia” to the theatres or the torrents in droves.

So there you have it: if you always wanted to see Banlieue 13/District 13, but were too illiterate and unworldly to watch it, and you need to satisfy your Paul Walker necrofilmia, the newer, dumber remake called Brick Mansions is just around the corner. Enjoy.