District B13 (2004, France)

Since at least Casino Royale, free running and Parkour have become pretty popular in mainstream action cinema, but their recent accessibility doesn’t diminish the awesome stunts in District B13. Luc Besson and his longtime cameraman/cinematographer Pierre Morel basically construct B13 around Parkour, casting originator David Belle and stuntman Cyril Raffaelli as a prisoner and a cop, respectively, unlikely partners working together to stop a bomb from destroying one of the worst neighborhoods in Paris. Yeah, there’s a plot – and a fair amount of talking about democracy, equality, etc. – but who cares? (Though it seems that some of the sermonizing is tied to the conceptual foundations of Parkour.) The action sequences kick ass. Morel is wise enough to keep the camera at a fair distance from the action, and to refrain from the excessive editing that has also become quite popular these days (one of my biggest quibbles with The Bourne Ultimatum). The one element of the action sequences that I wasn’t sure about was the score – pretty terrific, but surprisingly down-tempo for what was actually happening onscreen. A lean 81 minutes, B13 could almost stand to lose another 5-10 minutes of run time and rid itself of the social moralizing that screams Besson, but it’s not like the movie makes that many demands on your time or your brainpower to begin with.