How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I watched this movie some weeks ago and noted it was showing on TV again. As the description referred to another movie with the same characters, I opened the IMD to read the plot to ensure it was not the one I had seen. I found it was the one I had seen and it received a very low score from fellow IMDb members. I think it is undeserving of such a low mark, yes it is an action movie which is not everyone's cup of tea, and I do not watch the standard beef/hemen that churn out action movie after action movie etc etc with little aptitude for acting or even a decent script.This movie was action however it was done with a little more flair than the average, it had a believable story of the future that seems all too real the way the world is going and the two lead actors were very believable and fit to say the least.It was a very pleasurable movie to watch, no it is not going to take you to the extremes of all your emotions and senses, it is just a nice movie to watch with talented actors and stunts. I only speak English so I had to gauge the mood while reading subtitles and I still thought it was worth watching and I would watch it again.

Plot: When a corrupt cop and a villainous real-estate developer plan to destroy District 13 by manufacturing a false atrocity then an honest cop and a Robin Hood like criminal have to combine forces, again.The problems with this film are twofold. The first problem is that this sequel is in every way inferior to its predecessor. An excess of plot leaves the two heroes squeezed out, the climax fight/mission is a damp squib, the music is a bad re-tread of the excellent soundtrack of the original, the editing/camera are both far less slick and satisfying, the villains are too bland and the lack of Leito's sister leaves this without an emotional core. There are fun moments, like Damien dressed as a Chinese tranny or a superb parkour sequence when Leito escapes his flat, but there are far too many stupid scenes, like a tiny Chinese cyberpunk prostitute gangster armed with a blade in her pony tail fighting police, or stupid ideas, like Damien's ridiculous tea-cosy hat, or flat moments, like the boring exposition scene between Leito and Damien in an air vent. In particular the plot is too convoluted, in an attempt to disguise that it is basically the same plot as the first film, which leads to the film forsaking the parkour chases and brilliantly realised ghettoes for the tedium of central Paris and bog-standard kung-fu in the third act.The other big problem is the political schizophrenia. The film starts off quite explicit about the results of open borders, globalisation and mass immigration by depicting tribalised, racially exclusive gangs with their own ghettoes. The five gangs are all stereotypes: East Asians (computer nerds), Africans (primitive, tribal), Muslims (fanatical), Skinheads (neo-Nazi) and Gypsy (thieving). The camera lingers on the proletarian squalor, the brutalism of the concrete ghettos and the foreignness of these ghettoised cultures. Yet at the same time it ends with the gangs coming together into one broad multi-cultural alliance (Skinheads and Muslims? Really?) to shame the evil white capitalist French elites and show how they are more French than the French. The conclusion, when the President promises a new district, with parks and jobs, seems like an absurdity. So we get the bourgeoisie leering at the horror of the underclass whilst feeling sorry for them and excusing them as victims. The film can't decide if it wants to be a right-wing fantasy where the criminals get their just deserts at the hands of fascist police or whether it wants to be a left-wing fantasy where the immigrant criminals prove superior to the indigenous population.

You'll hear it here first, since nobody else bothered to highlight this to the man on the street. District 13 - Ultimatum suffers from what the dubbing disease, and it's not just the Hong Kong films that aren't given the respect they deserve, to have its language tracked dubbed over by another language. For some inexplicable reason, we got the poor English dubbed version of the film, which means that the mouths don't sync with the words being spoken.It's irritating to say the least, because it's in-your-face distracting. Worse, the voices of the dubbers lack enthusiasm, and everyone sounds like everyone else (no budget to get one dubber for each actor?) droning on and on that you'll likely find the insipid plot dabbling with corruption from government forces and private enterprises a tad of a turn off, if not for the nicely designed action sequences to redeem some of the contrived acting and storyline in the film. Yes some may argue that a film like this should be focused on the action and not what's said, but the overall experience is nonetheless irrevocably marred.Picking off directly where we last left off with Captain Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli), Leito (David Belle) and Leito's sister Lola (being forgotten in this sequel) parted ways to jog your memory on who the top dogs are, the opening few minutes brings us up to speed where Damien and Leito are in their lives. We get a special effects laden camera-work zooming in and out of a digitized city during the opening credits, before ample time's taken to show Leito still being the pain in the behind for the police with his District 13 antics, while Damien continues in building up his reputation as the go-to man for police stings, having single- handedly (ok, with fists and kicks) bring down an entire vice operations.Which provides for plenty of action in the film as Damien fights his way out of a trapped club, and probably one of the longest action sequences with hard-hitting action involving the playful maneuver of a Van Gogh piece. Fans of Parkour though will have to wait a little longer for David Belle's Leito to strut his stuff, and the co-founder of Parkour doesn't fail to impress, especially with his one man escape from the cops atop rooftops, which warrant this particular segment a second watch as it's likely to serve as inspiration to all Parkour practitioners.Other than that the plot forces our dynamic duo to cooperate once more as they take on corrupt internal security who has been stringing the French President along with their naughty plan of creating havoc between the cops and the denizens of District 13, now with five different ethnic groups trying to fill a power vacuum created from the previous film, and Luc Besson tries hard to make it something of a political thriller as well, which director Patrick Alessandrin tended to shelve aside and include only as a necessary filler in between action sequences, which get larger and louder, only for the climax to falter with too many cooks spoiling the broth. To be honest i wasn't that impressed with the first film other than to witness Parkour in action, and this film continues with that impression. As I mentioned, the damage was done with the lines that were spoken, and I'd imagine whether it was Besson's responsibility for some of the corniest lines ever uttered in cinema, or was that the result of not treating the source material with respect, and hiring all the wrong guys from translating to delivering that ultimately proved to be the real letdown. If given a chance I'll watch this again, with the proper language track thank you very much.

It was not up to the standard to the first film. I still liked some fight scenes. I saw the deleted and extended scenes on the DVD, and it was basically 9 min of fight footage that was not used. Which i think was too bad. I think most of them should have been included in the film. I feel they could have improved the film a bit. Poor decision in my opinion. I think it had some great new moves from Raffaelli and Belle. In my opinion is these the reasons for it: worse editing in the fights, shaky camera, too little Parkour, too little fights for Belle, some poor camera angles and too little screen time for Belle If they make a third film, which i think they will do. They should have learned the mistakes i mentioned from this film. I hope they can find an even balance between the fights and Parkour scenes. They would be perfect.