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Banlieue 13 - Ultimatum
With its' high-adrenaline fusion of parkour and martial arts, the original Banlieue 13 (aka District 13) was one of the more unique releases of 2004 and became a worldwide cult hit. Unfortunately, its' followup, Ultimatium, falls to the dreaded aliment of sequelitis and fails to capture the magic of its' cinematic big brother.
Taking place in Paris a few years in the future, the titular District 13 is a walled-off area of the city where all of the "undesirables" (the poor and gang members) are kept. Sensing a financial opportunity via urban renewal, the head of the French secret service starts riots inside D13 in order to convince the president to level it. Lo and behold, it's up to a mis-matched team of a cop and a criminal to try and stop D13 from becoming a pile of rubble.
The story initially holds some promise, but Ultimatium's weak script doesn't help matters. Those who haven't seen the first movie may be a bit confused as to exactly what's going on, since there's little in the way of bridges made between the two films. Those who have seen the first movie might not fare any better, since there's absolutely nothing in the way of character development -- you could have literally put any number of characters or actors into the same space pccupied as the leads, and you probably would get roughly the same results. And both sets of viewers most likely aren't going to dig the ending, which pretty much pisses all over the ninety minutes that proceeds it. I won't spoil matters, but let's just say that the characters actions, and motivations for doing so, make absolutely no sense, and we're left with one of the worst finales in recent memory.
The kind of half-ass feeling permeates the action scenes as well. For the most part, the parkour (free running) that made the first film such a treat to watch is ditched in favor of more tradtional martial arts. It's fun enough stuff, but really not all that inventive or unique. One sequence even goes so far as to pay "homage" to Jet Li's High Risk (aka Meltdown) by having a small car drive through a big building. Like Ultimatum as a whole, the action is good in a brainless way, but if one were to put their mind to it, they probably could come up with any number of films that are done better than this. RATING: 6 |
