terrible... so disappointed.

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A group of friends go to Bangkok and set up a gym, and come across a ruthless gang that works for the Yakuza.I genuinely had high hopes for this film as the producers of District 13 were behind this...But, I realised that it was the producers not the director. The film has awful fight scenes, worthless parkour chase scenes but one thing that really bugged me was the character development, Kenji, seemed to learn Muay Thai within an afternoon.The film was all over the place...at one moment, the characters are best of friends, then they talk about leaving and then they fight, then one character begins to see ghosts and has a vision of the future...not to mention the dress code of some of the baddies...with great big hoods.Tsu played by Elodie Yung, was probably the one thing that kept this movie watchable, she was beautiful and elegant in her fight scenes, sadly the other actors were not.

Team Yamakazi get to display their amazing Free Running skills again in this their second feature film. Once again like the previous movie, the acrobatic abilities of these seemingly fearless individuals is guaranteed to leave ones mouth agape at the sheer spectacle on display here – this truly is an awesome art form and one which proves to be a perfect bedfellow for the action movie genre.Added to the crazy physical shenanigans we are also treated to some highly stylish visuals throughout especially courtesy of the stunning scenery in Thailand and a number of instances of highly imaginative and impressive visual effects such as in one scene wherein our main protagonists are seen traversing continents in one fluid take. Great stuff!Unfortunately however, despite the above glowing accolades, beneath all the surface gloss, it has to be said that when all is said and done the film in question has very little actual substance within.One of the main problems here lay in the fact that there are simply too many sub stories running throughout. Each of our main characters has their own separate 'adventures' in addition to the encompassing plot. Personal voyages of self discovery, the blossoming of love, loneliness, personal ambition and home sickness all feature here which in a much longer film might have sat more easily. However at a mere 90 or so minutes the actual effect is one of disjointedness and one that in addition actually serves to detract from the main plot. Certainly there were those who criticised the first film for the same principle, but it was not nearly as pronounced there as it is here.On the other hand, perhaps it is redundant to judge the film on such principles. After all, as an action movie this delivers some absolutely incredible set pieces; Indeed for pure kinetic enjoyment only the works of the likes of Jackie Chan or Tony Jaa etc are going to provide the same sort of adrenaline fix.In the final analysis then I feel that it is best to judge this film on it's merits as opposed to its flaws and with this in mind I would certainly recommend it highly to fans of crazy stunts, martial arts and general urban mayhem.Overall: An entirely respectable 7 out of 10 (Just don't go trying the stunts at home!)

This is the second feature for the French stunt acrobat group Yamakasi. They are all very talented but director Julien Seri can't capitalize on this talent to save his life. Granted, this is a bit better than the eyeball killer YAMAKASI (2001) but not by much. The group finds themselves in Thailand and they end up feuding with a local Yakuza (!) gang. Each member is given more to do this time whether it be falling in love or re-connecting with one's long dead mystical father. There are quite a few action scenes but nothing really stands out. Director Seri has an unbelievable ability to shoot stuff in a way that it has so little impact. The only high point is a shot where three guys drop about 5 stories down a series of silos that is shot in one take. Given that Thailand produced their own badass actioner in ONG BAK the year before, it is sad to see these talented guys relying on lots of wirework. I pray that someone will utilize their parkour skills in something in the future that is a bit more engaging like BANLIEUE 13.

Some minor spoilers included. This movie looked very good when i first saw the trailer of it, but unfortunately after watching it i was very disappointed. Although the movie has been shot beautifully, the way it's been put together spoils the experience. I don't know if it was because of the subtitles, but it was next to impossible to discover a storyline in this movie. I found out what the story was by reading the DVD cover, but this shouldn't be necessary. It felt like the back story was all very well known to the producers of the movie, but they didn't put enough into bringing this forward in the movie itself. Because of this near lack of story you don't really connect to the characters and feel like watching some scenes instead of a coherent movie. The stunts and acting performed by the actors is good, but you'd be better off watching Yamakasi instead, in which there's more of a story and the stunts are similar. A missed opportunity.