Word: b13
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Dates: during 2006-2006
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...DISTRICT B13...
...that have been imitated in hundreds of movies. But Casino Royale succeeds by taking a modern form of physical activity--parkour, the urban steeplechase in which participants run up stairwells, jump across roofs and slip through transoms that was showcased to exhilarating effect in the French film District B13--and applying it to Bond's pursuit of a bad guy (parkour star Sébastien Foucan) on the high beams of a construction project. Marvelous...
...matter simply: The French thriller District B13 makes everything Hollywood has lately done in the action genre look clumsy, dull and stale. It is a short, nonstop stuntfest that, by going back to basics and placing them on the screen with simple, breathless stylishness, turns what is essentially a lowlife movie form into something one is not embarrassed to call "pure" cinema--all energy, movement and high kinetic...
...into official ghettos, requiring a pass to enter or leave and ruled by gangs. A guy named Leïto (David Belle) runs afoul of one of them, and his sister is abducted and enslaved by its comically malevolent leader (Bibi Naceri). Meanwhile, a WMD has gone missing somewhere in B13, and a cop named Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) makes common cause with Leïto to retrieve...
...usual 24--with the pace then slowed down in postproduction to achieve an extraordinarily graceful effect. When they fight, which is often, the editing is superb, with the cuts landing precisely on action and reaction. It's amazing how these simple devices, used intermittently in other films, energize District B13. The film never pauses to gather its forces for a set-piece action sequence. The whole damned thing is a set piece...