District 13: Ultimatum

District 13: Ultimatum

Directed by Patrick Alessandrin

Runtime:101 min.

To say that District 13: Ultimatum is the most socially conscious project former director-turned-screenwriter/producer Luc Besson (who also has his [From Paris With Love ]in theaters at the same time) has undertaken would be a drastic understatement. More so than even the original District 13 or even the Taxi films, Ultimatum is hyper-aware of the racial underpinnings that support its gallic Escape from New York pastiche. Besson gleefully jangles his viewers' nerves with Ultimatum’s blissfully facile view of the Parisian banlieu. He propels the plot of this sci-fi sequel forward with the grace of the gaudiest of heavy-duty hydraulics and the pomp of sub-woofers that blare hip-hop and R&B with brazen pride—it bobs up-and-down furiously but never ahead very far.

There’s no accounting for taste in the film but Besson has always excelled at delivering blissfully shallow carnivalesque celebrations of urban alienation and here, in this near-future society where Paris has become a haven for race-based ghettoes, he’s found a very sturdy platform for his latest wonderfully obnoxious graffito.

District 13: Ultimatum begins almost immediately after District 13 left off: good cop-bad-cop team Capt. Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli) and Leito (fellow parkour star, if such a thing exists, David Belle) part ways after their last case and go their separate ways. Tomaso burrows undercover for the French police in the most violent areas of the city now that les flics have all but given up on them, while the Leito goes to ground, looking for new contacts or some such “street-wise” activity. Together, they take their sweet time in uncovering a new batch of corrupt politicians that plan on using ghetto strife funded by the “Harriburton” corporation as an excuse to raze existing slums and erect high-end office buildings.

This elusive plot is initially uncovered by a group of blitzed would-be gangbangers armed with a camera phone and way too much time on their hands (these guys hang out at night waiting for a deal to go down with all of the subtlety of guys using plastic palm fronds for camouflage). The fact that Web 2.0 urban entrepreneurs help kill some corrupt politicos and an evil gentrification scheme all with one phone is a glaring indication that Besson’s idea of relevance is stunted. But then again, he was never trying to be more sophisticated than that.

The joy of District 13: Ultimatum comes from watching talented showmen like Besson and the film’s stuntmen stars go to work while being as fast-and-loose as they want to be. Raffaeli and Belle still lack the charm that would make their tight-lipped line deliveries memorable, but they still run, kick and hop around like nobody’s business. If anything, Besson doesn’t give them enough room to develop their story, but that’s probably because he’s struggling to give the skimpy set-up of the first film some much-needed heft.

Here, that means slowly setting the stage for a Warriors-esque, racially-divided group of gangs to band together and save District 13 from diabolical white frogs. There’s just enough humor and action in the slow build-up to that finale to keep Besson’s Carpenter love letter afloat and memorably entertaining even if nothing else sticks. It’s also infinitely more joyful than [District 9] in its race-baiting—though that’s not saying much at all.