Pretty Good

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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choice for Cyril Raffaelli's character in the original, but he's no martial artist so the martial arts fights have been replaced by fist fights and a greater emphasis on car chases.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.

District 13 is a great movie! This is a wannabe copy. I don't mind copying movies to reach a broader audience, but somehow this movie fails to capture the details that made the original movie great.The beginning scene where Belle escapes had less wow-factor than D13, and the music was way off. The scene was ruined. This is occurring throughout the movie.It might be the director, I won't point fingers, but D13 director also made Taken, the director of Brick Mansion made Taken 2, just saying.It should be mentioned that the acting is way off too. The main villain is good, the mains (Belle, Walker) are decent, but so many of the side characters horribly acted. Without exaggeration I have seen student films with way better acting.In short: Avoid at all cost if you can bear subtitles/know french ;)

I loved this movie...now I've seen a few reviews calling this one garbage and stuff compared to the original but I've never seen the original and never heard of it until I saw reviews comparing it to the original. So my review is based off what I saw. It was good...kind of reminded me of Fast & Furious for which Paul Walker is famous for but with a different angle. The character, Lino was awesome, that guy really knew how to get around. Paul Walker has once again...blown me away with his acting...so sad that he's gone we lost such an amazing human being and actor. But I will be suggesting this movie to anyone who loves good action movies like this.

OK everyone repeat with me ... "NO MORE SUPER SHAKY GRAINY CAM". This is nothing but a cheap way to try and do action scenes and it takes us back almost 100 years in technical expertise and film making.The only thing worse is the fake confetti explosions.What are they doing, making these films 8 frames a second digitally so there is less detail and easier to hide mistakes? The action scenes no longer have to be acted out because they are so shaky and grainy you can't see anything and only get a headache.Old Godzilla films are far more professional looking.If this is to be stopped we all need to make a big stink about it.