Goatmoose

Wow, this was a good one.

Most of you have probably seen The Transporter films, or at least one of them. Most of you have probably heard of the recent Liam Neeson thriller “Taken.” Well, this French film is from Luc Besson, the writer of The Transporter (and Taken, Bandidas, The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita TV series, and other great action titles) and Pierre Morel, the director of Taken. It’s a perfect action film: hella awesome stunts, nonstop movement, a plotline just strong enough to hold the movie together, some overblown characters and lots of fists and bullets.

For those of you who have trouble watching non-English movies, you’re just a stupid lazy knucklehead.

Here’s the overall plot: District B13 is the roughest, toughest housing project area that you can imagine. The local authorities built a giant barbed wire wall around it to keep the scumbags in and everyone else out. The cops don’t give a shit about it, people in town don’t give a shit about it, and it’s basically considered a long lost cause. A B13 thug named Taha, who has a million cronies that work for him, kidnapped the sister of a fellow named Leito. Leito is played by David Belle, the founder of parkour, and probably the most fit human being alive. On another string, a bomb makes its way into B13 and into Taha’s posession. A cop named Damien (played by Cyril Raffaelli, the 2nd most fit human being alive) is sent on a mission to go disarm the bomb, and Leito is to accompany him and meanwhile rescue his sister. The nutshell of a typical wacky action film.

But these guys make Jason Statham look like a wussy.

The first thing you will think when the action opens up is “holy crap, this dude is insane.” That dude is David Belle. The action in this film heavily relies on parkour, the free running method he invented. Have you ever seen someone jumping across rooftops, landing and rolling, or climbing a wall that isn’t climbable, or leaping from a railing to a skinny wall, flipping onto another railing, doing a wall run and jumping to safety? Yeah, that’s parkour – and it’s all through this film. I believe I read that 90% of the stunts had no wires, safety trickery or CGI involved. It’s all pure human awesomeness. Having the man behind parkour as a main character is ace, and Cyril is just as good by his side.

Here, just check it out for yourself. This is about 5-10 minutes into the movie:

The direction is solid, as even though this was Pierre Morel’s directorial debut, he has long been a cinematographer and knows his way around the camera. The soundtrack is rad, the pacing is great, and all the actors straight through to minor characters are better than you find in a lot of action films. And man, this film gets intense.

It’s only 84 minutes long so it flies right by, and also means you have no excuse to not watch it. And it made me remember how much I want to speak French. Tres bien.

Buy it for $8.99 on DVD from Amazon or $18.99 for Blu Ray.