French Gangsta Chic

District B13

Directed by Pierre Morel

In an ambitious attempt to set a new benchmark in the action/martial arts genre, the futuristic District B13 shows us an astonishingly athletic brigade of French gangsters who scale buildings and leap alleyways in a single bound.

Set in Paris 2110, in a banlieu (B13, of course) that's controlled by drug-dealing thugs and is so crime-ridden it's been fenced in and is on the verge of abandonment by the police, the plot involves a stand alone hero who strives to defeat the prevailing gang, find and disarm a stolen nuclear bomb, and liberate both the neighborhood and his sister who's been kidnapped, chained up and drugged out by the super sleazy and explosively violent main meanie.

Nothing new about that. But the film, directed by Luc Besson protégé, Pierre Morel, has such a smart, chic and sleek style that it transcends its mundane plot and becomes an engaging, satisfying piece of entertainment.

Beautifully choreographed fight and chase scenes are balletic-or, perhaps more accurately, Pilobolis-like. There's not a lot of disgusting blood and gore to distract from the visual pleasure of watching ultra-fly bodies soar through extremely thrilling action sequences.

Stuntmen-turned-actors Cyril Raffaelli and David Belle (who invented parkour, the human movement technique that some compare to martial arts, others to dance) star, and both are deft and convincing. There's even a bit of French rap-to push the popularity factor. And the action-hero-positive-message keeps District B13 from being just another bleak and burned out crime-infested scenario.