Yamakasi : Les Samouraïs des temps modernes

In the wonderful world of the well fed children who have nothing to fear but taxes when it comes to having to deal with the state there grows the fairy tale of the Yamakasi. It's fake. It lacks imagination unless for the idea of the tall building climbers. But that thing is going to be done far better in New Police Story three years later.

Probably the worse thing in this production is the scenario and the political goals. In a world where young people of low qualification and of foreign descent hardly gets any employment, in a world where most young people of that region can't find steady jobs even with good genes and an education, well, all the Yamakasi are employed if they don't have anything better to do. In this fantasy dimension the police knows them, wants them, yet they can't get them at home as they do in real life France.

And if the prototype of the idiot is the cop in most bad taste jokes, the maghrebin cop has no contact with the outside world. He's precisely the virgin who's trying, hard, to run a brothel.

Really, if there wasn't the purpose of propaganda nobody would have produced such junk. But, hey, the whole nation can see the darkies have it all: a fair chance for transplant, friendly police and jobs to choose from. It's only their evil nature that stands in the ways of friendship between the white majority and the others. And to keep things simple for the target audience to be able to follow the simple ideas they are fed all the targets live in the area of the same police district and the same cops are on duty on each event.

Myself, I'm disgusted.

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Yamakasi is a refreshing change from Hollywood style films. It's not Besson's masterpiece, the story is not THAT original, but the music, the cool "action" and the fresh style makes it a worthwhile experience.

The story itself is about 7 modern samurai, "yamakasi", that try to help a dying boy by stealing money from rich people in order to buy a donor-heart.

The action, although there isn't as much in it as the trailer would led you to believe, mostly consists of the yamakasi running away, climbing buildings, doing crazy jumps, and other stunts involving pedestrians.

Rating: 7/10

In the bright lighted side, we could see the yamakasis, these stuntmen of cities in the luc Besson movie. In the shadowed side, there is parkour, that is also called the art of movement, and that most of the public doesn't know about, and it is understandable: these spider-men's reputation grew, and other young people wanted to practice. David and Sébastien share their passion with anybody who wants to know. The news is spreading: from neighbour cities of noisy and sarcelles, young people move to evry to learn the parkour. The rumour works well, and the show 'notre dame de Paris' offers them to go on a tour, but David and sébastien refuse: a two years tour across France would cut them from their base, and above all they don't want to abandon the other young people who need their help. Then luc besson comes up with a script for yamakasi. They refuse that too. The scenario presents them as revolted boys from housing estates who trick the police and use their skills to steal. Seb explains: 'us, that we don't want, it's to prostitute our art' chilling incorruptible ones. For how long? Seven of the newcomers - including David's cousin give in the temptation and play in the movie. They separate from the group of evry, and rename themselves the yamakasis (strong man, strong spirit). Once famous, they claim to have invented the Parkour, betraying the true parkourists. David, Seb and the others (Stéphane Vigroux, Yoann Vigroux, Jérome ben Aoues, Rudy Duong, Kazuma and Michael Ramdami) rename themselves the 'traceurs'. Irritated by this story, they tell me that: 'to anyone who want to learn the art of parkour, it's welcome, but for the media events, we reserve us the right to choose: now we know who come to train when there's a TV near, and who's really got the passion'. We understand them.

The YAMAKASI are a bunch of kids who practise what is variously known as Parkour and Free Running, a sort of sport/art/philosophy involving the development of skills for the traversal of urban environments in interesting ways (http://www.parkour.com/).

YAMAKASI the film is a Luc Besson production that basically provides a vehicle for 7 of these kids to show their stuff, in the pretence of helping a young kid who needs a heart transplant. It actually feels rather like a kids film, with larger than life characters (a bit of a keystone cops thing going on) and a message about being a bit rebellious but in a good way, or something.

The group are real life practitioners of Parkour, not professional actors - which kind of shows, though not in a particularly bad way - they're not wooden, but don't exactly express deep or complicated emotions.

Given that the film is basically a vehicle for Parkour, it's somewhat disappointing that not all that much of it is shown. There's some building scaling which is impressive but not particularly cinematic, then a bunch of antics where very little "free running" is shown - there are just a couple of scenes which show the potential the film could have had, towards the end. That potential has recently been realised much more dramatically in the film BANLIEUE 13, where one of the founders of Parkour is teamed up with martial artist Cyril Raffaelli for some truly original and sometimes incredible action sequences which show how Parkour could really be the foundation of a whole new action style. It's a shame that YAMAKASI, for whatever reason, didn't seem to know what to do with it. I'm hoping that the semi-sequel LES FILS DU VENT will put the group's talents to better use.

I saw this movie in Hong Kong in October 2001 DUBBED by a famous (the only one in Hong Kong???) local Cantonese hip-hop collective called LMF (Lazy Muthaf*ckas) in Cantonese and I have never laughed so hard in my life. It was a brilliant move on the part of the distributers to wide-release it with an entirely redone script and was extremely popular for weeks. There were brilliant rhyme sequences on the part of the ensemble that could only be replicated in Cantonese. They also had a dubbed Mandarin version out in theatres but I don't think it could've measured up at all. My friend and I were curious to see how it was in French, and it sounds like it was really crap. Occasionally French films get wide release in Hong Kong, like The Crimson Rivers (Les rivières pourpres), but it's very badly dubbed in English and people are quite used to seeing subtitles at the bottom of the screen as it is. The dubbing for Yamakasi made a so-so movie into one of the must-sees that year, definitely the best comedy I saw all year.