Three years after they saved the Paris ghetto known as District 13 from being leveled by a bomb-happy maniac, undercover cop Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli) and socially conscious vigilante Leïto (David Belle) reunite to foil a band of crooked security consultants and politicians planning to foment urban warfare, raze the district and redevelop it at great profit.

CRITIQUE

District 13: Ultimatum is pretty much just a remake of District 13, only with less action and more (lame) story. Seeing as how the story wasn’t exactly the original’s selling point, this isn’t necessarily a good thing. No one (or at least no one I know) cared one whit about co-writer Luc Besson’s (who gets the only writing credit here) attempts at social and political commentary (mostly because his attempts were heavy-handed and unintentionally funny), digging the movie for its amazing parkour action, which was so good it helped make up for Besson’s pointless digressions.

Four years later (six if you go by the date of the original’s French release) parkour is no longer the novelty it was back then, now on the road to becoming just another demonstration of physical skill. Sure, it’s still impressive to watch some fool scale a building without any sort of mechanical assistance (or in the case of these movies, CG enhancements), but it’s not as impressive as it was a few years ago. Couple that with the fact that this movie’s longer running time (fifteen minutes longer than its predecessor) makes room only for more (lame) plotting and you end up with something of a lesser experience.

Just how stupid Besson’s attempts at topicality are can be summed up in one word: Harriburton. That’s the name of the corporation that is attempting to destroy and then rebuild District 13, wiping out the slum’s population and replacing the dilapidated housing and makeshift bazaars with luxurious high-rises and expansive shopping malls. That’s the best he could come up with? Harriburton? That’s sound like something that you’d hear an unfunny Catskills comedian say while doing ethnic shtick. And let me guess--the evil security guy work for Brackwater, right? If that’s the best you can do, you’re better off not even trying. Good grief, the “de-kaffir-nated” line in Lethal Weapon 2 makes for better commentary, and it’s meant to get a frigging laugh.

Also, I imagine it must be hard to make an action flick that also works on a sociopolitical level, and even those few that do work aren’t completely successful (I’m thinking of Three Kings), but what Besson attempts doesn’t work at all. Now get this: Not only is all of the high-minded stuff dumb, so is pretty much everything else the script has to offer.

The conspiracy that fuels the story would crumble in the blink of an eye were any of the good guys to suddenly grow a brain and visit any sort of media outlet and offer up a certain piece of videotaped evidence. It would also crumble were any sort of ballistics investigation or autopsy performed on the bodies of two cops who are allegedly killed by a few District 13 thugs but in reality were killed by a couple of the crooked security consultants (this act is intended to help precipitate a war between the gangs that control much of District 13 and the cops), which I’m sure is de rigueur in the real world but doesn’t even get a passing mention here (we’re not even let in on whether or not the bad guys have blocked just such an investigation).

The first movie marked the directing debut of Pierre Morel, who would later collaborate with Besson on the very successful Taken and the soon-to-be-forgotten From Paris with Love. Filling Morel’s shoes here is Patrick Alessandrin, another Besson protégé. (Quick aside: Am I the only one who’d like to see the Besson who made Nikita and Léon direct another flick? I miss that guy.)

From evidence presented here, Alessandrin may become a good action director at some point, but he’s obviously a neophyte, favoring editing over visual flow and coherence (and perhaps also using it to mask his occasional missteps). But his unrefined stylistics can’t diminish just how incredible much of the stuntwork is. Have you ever longed to see a guy take down a dozen bad guys while simultaneously trying to protect a priceless Van Gogh? Well now’s your chance.

There’s also the requisite sequence in which someone escapes his pursuers by hopping across the face of a towering apartment building and then leaping from rooftop to rooftop, which comes across as more than a little rehearsed and contrived (one of the great things about parkour is how spontaneous and improvisational it is) but still looks cool. And the final battle delivers the exact sort of balls-out insanity you look for in a movie of this stripe. If only you didn’t have to sit through so much boring, stupid plotting to get to it...

THE VIDEO

The 2.35:1/1080p transfer--encoded with VC-1--is a good presentation, hampered only by some of the aesthetic choices made by Alessandrin and cinematographer Jean-François Hensgens. Some of the darker scenes can get a little murky, and bathing some shots in vivid primaries causes some bleeding and haziness. Many exteriors are a little soft, but this is undoubtedly intentional. When left to stand on its own, though, the image is nicely detailed (so much so that the CG used to turn Belgrade into Paris won’t fool anyone, even when it’s softened) and three-dimensional.

THE AUDIO

You get two DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio tracks here--the original French and a rather bad English dub (to which the disc defaults). The sound design is as loud and active as you’d expect, throwing discrete effects and snatches of music (Da. Octopuss. offers another bass-heavy score) all around. Deep bass action is prevalent throughout. The only problem here is dialogue, which has a rather odd echo-y, reverb-y character at times (sort of like that weird effect you get when you pump audio through both your receiver and television, which aren’t synced; I even checked to make sure this wasn’t the case).

English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The Making of District 13: Ultimatum (26 minutes, SD) is a pretty good making-of featurette, succinctly covering the entire production.

A production diary (35 minutes, SD) compiles raw behind-the-scenes footage shot on the movie’s Belgrade locations. 

A deleted/extended scenes compilation (9 minutes, SD) offers a bit more action, presenting bits that were trimmed from a couple of the fight scenes.

HDNet: A Look at District 13: Ultimatum (4 minutes, HD) is one of those lame promo pieces that run on HDNet.  

A music video (4 minutes, SD) for a song by the French rapper Alonzo demonstrates why the phrase “French rapper” is a contradiction in terms.   

FINAL THOUGHTS

Familiarity and Besson’s lame-brained attempts at social and political relevance hobble the movie, but the fantastic stuntwork makes it worth a viewing.