District 13 (2004)
French made action film, and when I watched with the English audio dubs (assuming action > audio) I realized that was a mistake, but not a major one. The English audio dubs aren't horrible, but they do distract you from the film. Not that the film is a masterwork that requires full attention - it is an action flick, first and foremost - and on that bill, it delivers pretty well. We have two main characters that are, to me, unknowns....but tey do their roles well, very well.
The storyline is a futuristic ghetto full of gangs, and the national gov't has walled it in. Someone decides to incite a war in order to justify blowing the place to dust and developing the land. Most of the film is about our two main characters (friends, but one is a cop on the outside, one is a guy on the inside of the ghetto) doing chase and fight scenes. The payoff is when the president is about to blow up the place for misguided reasons, and a 'superstud' from each gang has been recruited by our two friends to get into the presidential palace to stop it and break up the corrupt group behind this. There's a little more sotry in terms of framing one of our leads, but tbh, it gets weak devlopment which is a LOT more than the interesting characters pulled together from the gangs (who get a one line introduction, and about 10 seconds each in fight scenes at best
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
).
So, bottom line. Action = YES (think Jackie Chan type athletic moves and choreography). Story = Meh. Characters = Meh. Filming = decent. Overall, if you are an action film junkie (ie, if you actually watched Transporter 2 or 3) you'll do well with this one.
**EDIT - HA! in finding the img for this post, I realized it was produced by the same guys who did the Transporter...lol. Fitting.
