Banlieue 13: Ultimatum

The incredibly acrobatic pairing of Parkour pioneer, David Belle and martial arts maestro Cyril Raffaelli team up once again for this sequel to the simply breathtaking District 13. It seems that the happy ending of the original film didn't come to fruition and the run down district of the films title is as crime ridden and grotty as ever. Once again, a shady government faction has designs to blow up the place (there's a bit more to it than that actually but that's basically it in a nutshell!) and it's up to our boys to re-team in an effort to put a stop to their nefarious plans.

Well, it has to be said that I concur with the general tide of opinion as regards this one; It's certainly a great watch in its own right yet pales against its predecessor not least of all due to the incredible Parkour displays which so elevated the original being extremely toned down here.......Why?!?! Nonetheless, as if to balance this, Raffaelli at least gets to show off far more of his incredible fighting skills in some truly amazing sequences, the like which are so seldom seen outside of Hong Kong cinema. It would have been really nice to see a few more appearances from members of the original cast (the hulking K2 and Leito's incredibly sexy sister would have been most welcome!) but it was not to be sadly. Still, as said previously the film stands well in its own right.....just try to overlook the somewhat sappy ending though.

Happened to catch this sequel on Sky Movies (which was transmitted sub-titled, rather than dubbed, so "thank you" Sky, for that) and thought it was great. I enjoyed it so much that I've just bought the first District 13 film on DVD from Amazon.

Cyril Raffaelli makes a good hero in the Jason Stathan mold and I thought the fight choreography was exceptional - as good as anything that comes out of Hong Kong, more realistic than theatrical, and very effective for that.

I was very impressed with Elodie Yung, too. Who wouldn't be?

Can't wait to see the first film, now ...

I was really hoping for something amazing after the first one, but this was just OK. David Belle is the founder of French parkour and unlike to the first one, he really didn't show much skill in this one. He did have one crazy jump though. Cyril Raffaelli also didn't show off his karate and wushu skills like the first. He did have a couple cool scenes though. Now the story is a little continued from the first, but very weak compared to the first. But they did add a lot of colorful characters in this one that I enjoyed. They all had their personal fighting style or action. The music in this film was pretty nice and worked well with the action. Now back to the story of the film. It is the same basic background like the first, but with a different bad guy. I guess you could say is it is pretty uneventful. All you really wait for is Belle or Raffaelli to do something cool. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy parts of the film, just not all of it.

It was not up to the standard to the first film. I still liked some fight scenes. I saw the deleted and extended scenes on the DVD, and it was basically 9 min of fight footage that was not used.

Which i think was too bad. I think most of them should have been included in the film. I feel they could have improved the film a bit. Poor decision in my opinion. I think it had some great new moves from Raffaelli and Belle. In my opinion is these the reasons for it:

worse editing in the fights, shaky camera, too little Parkour, too little fights for Belle, some poor camera angles and too little screen time for Belle

If they make a third film, which i think they will do. They should have learned the mistakes i mentioned from this film. I hope they can find an even balance between the fights and Parkour scenes. They would be perfect.

I was a bit disappointed with B13 Ultimatum, and I'm judging it against the first installment of B 13. I expected it to be on par if not better than the original but I found it slower, flatter and far less dynamic. Somewhat similar to Matrix and Matrix Reloaded, the 1st being fresh and dynamic and the 2nd being more polished and elaborate, though I thought the latter was still very good. B13 Ultimatum is plagued by some bad scripting and cartoonish and ridiculous characters - like the face-tattooed Tao - and lost credibility as the film progresses, becoming a mediocre Hollywood action flick. One detail that I found amusing and ridiculous was the amount of gun-less cops that were mowed over by the two protagonists, yet when they did use guns, the shower of bullets seemed useless against the seemingly bullet-proof little Citroen or Renault get-away car.. Hollywood, eat your heart out.