01-14-2007, 02:03 PM
This is Escape from NY redone by a pad of crazy frogs. Isn't pad the correct measure word for frogs? I know it's 'flock of sheep,' 'death of crows' and 'mange of yetis,' and I thought it was 'pad of frogs' too. Sure sounds right. Anyway, this film is landmark in the martial genre, right up there with Tony Jaa's last two. It the next gen - the parkour players with hip hop sensibilities. It'll stand as one of the more interesting martial arts flicks of the mid '10's....errrr, as in 2010's....hmm, that doesn't sound right at all...
The action is solidly-paced. Nice stunts. Nice fights. Balletic gun play. Very nice stunts actually, although I felt the could have been filmed less ballistically, less like some hip hop video; often its hard to see the action clearly. The parkour in Casino Royale was actually showcased much better - or at least to better dramatic heights. Besson tends to shoot tight and claustrophobic - Bond tend to be more panoramic - parkour needs to be shot on a panoramic level to show how far these guys are jumping in their stunts. Even Jackie new that back in the day (but seems to have lost it in some more recent efforts). Still, where Bond is a sharpshooter, B13 is a shotgun blast. B13 literally jumps into high gear with the opening sequence, then spends the rest of the movie trying to sustain that energy. Arguably, it succeeds. The plot is simple and unobtrusive. The plot is Escape from NY, only it's a clean bomb instead of Donald Pleasance. And it's in French. Nothing like that gritty French street talk. Some cool cars, very Euro, but the car chases are kept to a minimum. The chase focus is on foot. The leads play their roles well. Some good villains. Best of all, one of the main villains is a heavy named YETI. *SPOILER ALERT* the bad part is yeti is dispatched too easily. *END SPOILER*
All in all, a very satisfactory flick. DM recommends it highly, especially because you can sound very authorative when people discuss the action in Casino Royale - bringing up a French martial arts film is an impressive film chat move - you can even link it to Youtube and sound very hip. I'm looking forward to the next parkour film with the same anticipation as the next Jaa film.
The action is solidly-paced. Nice stunts. Nice fights. Balletic gun play. Very nice stunts actually, although I felt the could have been filmed less ballistically, less like some hip hop video; often its hard to see the action clearly. The parkour in Casino Royale was actually showcased much better - or at least to better dramatic heights. Besson tends to shoot tight and claustrophobic - Bond tend to be more panoramic - parkour needs to be shot on a panoramic level to show how far these guys are jumping in their stunts. Even Jackie new that back in the day (but seems to have lost it in some more recent efforts). Still, where Bond is a sharpshooter, B13 is a shotgun blast. B13 literally jumps into high gear with the opening sequence, then spends the rest of the movie trying to sustain that energy. Arguably, it succeeds. The plot is simple and unobtrusive. The plot is Escape from NY, only it's a clean bomb instead of Donald Pleasance. And it's in French. Nothing like that gritty French street talk. Some cool cars, very Euro, but the car chases are kept to a minimum. The chase focus is on foot. The leads play their roles well. Some good villains. Best of all, one of the main villains is a heavy named YETI. *SPOILER ALERT* the bad part is yeti is dispatched too easily. *END SPOILER*
All in all, a very satisfactory flick. DM recommends it highly, especially because you can sound very authorative when people discuss the action in Casino Royale - bringing up a French martial arts film is an impressive film chat move - you can even link it to Youtube and sound very hip. I'm looking forward to the next parkour film with the same anticipation as the next Jaa film.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse