Banlieue 13 (District B13) (2004)

"This is actually the best part of my day so far."

In the near future, violence has skyrocketed in the impoverished outskirts of Paris, which are now ruled by sadistic drug lords and their private armies. The French government has either responded to this phenomenon or caused it by walling off the most dangerous "districts," like the eponymous B13. Leïto (David Belle) lives inside B13. He is a vigilante (?) and landlord (??) who has stolen a lot of heroin, in a public service kind of way. When enforcers come to recover the drugs, Leïto destroys the stash and leads them on a merry chase across the rooftops. B13's kingpin, Taha (Bibi Naceri), retaliates by kidnapping Leïto's little sister, Lola (Dany Verissimo). Leïto almost rescues her, but the cops double-cross him, he goes to jail, and Lola is enslaved by Taha. (We'll come back to that.)

Meanwhile, in a more respectable part of Paris, we meet Capt. Damien Tomasso (Cyril Raffaelli), a cop who's infiltrated a criminal Spanish roulette operation? I don't know; something like that. Something gambling-related. Damien arrests the head Spaniard and, um, kills like twenty guys? Because that is a correct end to an undercover operation. Once Damien's bad-ass cred is established, the movie partners him with Leïto; the two of them are sent to B13 to disarm a bomb that Taha has stolen from the French government.

This movie is not that great. The plot is generally thin and yet still sometimes confusing. The characters and stakes are established in ways that ensured I would not care about them. The acting ranges from workmanlike to atrocious (I'm looking at you, Marc Andréoni). But--and this is a big "but"--there is PARKOUR. If, somehow, in this day and age, you do not know what parkour is, look it up on YouTube. You're welcome. Also, cancel all your plans; you will be watching parkour videos for the next week or so.

Raffaelli's stuntwork as Damien is good, and I enjoyed the set piece that introduces his character, but the real star of the action (and thus of the movie) is Belle. His chase scene at the beginning of the movie is so great. Sorry to wimp out on describing it, but if I say, "He leaps out a high-rise window onto a rope," it is not nearly as cool as when you see him leaping out a high-rise window onto a rope. I wish B13 were all parkour chase scenes, strung together with the bare minimum of dialogue. Parkour porn, in short.

But it is not that. Instead, it tries to be a real movie with, among other things, a real lady storyline. Bad decision. Listen: you cannot have your one and only female character spend the majority of the film being drugged and raped. I don't mean the only female character of note. I mean, truly, the only female non-extra onscreen. This movie is very much like Tennessee Williams, in that it hates women and is totally gay. Leïto and Damien spend their acquaintance 1) fighting in order to form an emotional bond, 2) handcuffing each other to things, and 3) basically doing it. I approve of all of that, but I wish action movies could be super gay without driving women into the cave of rape and irrelevance. If you will it, Luc Besson, it is no dream.

While we're on the subject of "me complaining about this movie's problems," B13 also has a slight case of Iron Man-itis. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I do not want action movies preaching to me about nonviolence or the democratic process. It draws me out of the world of flying people and whizzing bullets and back into the world where high body counts are horrifying, not entertaining. The scene in which Damien speechifies at the defense minister is B13's equivalent of the press conference where Tony Stark declares he has "more to offer this world than just making things that blow up." First of all, no, you don't. Second, shut up. Don't burden me with an excursus on your highly selective morality; it ruins the amoral fun of the movie.

My "liked it" rating may be confusing in light of the preceding paragraphs, but, in the wise words of my roommate Mary, "Parkour always deserves seven stars."

- 3 stars

Speed (1994)

Or, as Eddie Izzard calls it, "La Vitesse."

This movie was pretty fucking deep, you guys. That is why I have not written in a week. It is because I have been PROCESSING.

Speed is about a man named Keanu Reeves, who is a brave cop but a terrible driver. He first appears in the movie flying over the San Francisco pavement to get to a hostagey bomby kind of situation. By "flying," I do not mean "driving quickly." I mean that he is airborne, in violation of the laws of God and man. Anyway, Keanu Reeves can't be great at everything. He shows up at a skyscraper with his partner Jeff Daniels, and they're sent to figure out how a crazy terrorist (Dennis Hopper) is planning to kill a bunch of people in an elevator. Their job, again: figure out what Dennis Hopper is doing. But Keanu's all, "Let's fix this ourselves, right now, just the two of us, because that is how hostage situations are resolved: with cranes and jumping." SPOILER ALERT: it is good that he goes all rogue on the saving-people portion of the evening but stupid that he tries to go after Dennis Hopper without reinforcements. As far as I can tell? Anyway, it doesn't really work out. Dennis Hopper gets Keanu to shoot Jeff Daniels, escapes in an explosion, and now has a shiny new vendetta against Our Hero.

The rest of the movie: Dennis Hopper blows up a bus, calls Keanu to tell him about another bus that will blow up if… you know the rest. Keanu tries to get to the bus before it reaches 50 mph, but he sucks, so then he has to jump onto the bus and keep it above 50. The driver gets shot, which means someone else has to drive! Will it be Keanu? As we all know, a fundamental rule of drama is that if Chekhov's Terrible Driver is placed on the wall in act one, he must drive terribly in act two. But no, disaster averted: Sandra Bullock drives instead. So we have bus shenanigans for a while (featuring Beth Grant!), and then the movie wraps up with a train thingy, okay done.

Before I saw Speed, I'd only heard about the crazy driving parts, not the elevator and train set pieces. There's a reason for that: the bus is the fun part of Speed. I don't know why the other bits go on so long, honestly. This movie is two hours, which seems pretty long for an action movie that should be 90 minutes.

The characters: Officer Keanu Reeves is such a dick. My goodness. He is always saying things like "C'mon, Jeff Daniels, save my life," when ostensibly he should be most worried about the ten or fifteen civilians on the bus with him (and also Jeff Daniels has his own shit to worry about, you know?). Plus at the beginning, he suggests shooting (hypothetical) hostages to "take them out of the equation."

Dick.

Dennis the Terrorist Menace confused me. He says shit that's supposed to be intimidating but isn't particularly. I mean, he's trying to blow up a dozen people. He's intimidating. But nothing is added by lines like, "It's getting on to 11 A.M., and I think it's going to be a very pretty day. HAHAHAHAHA!" Okay? Okay, I guess, Dennis Hopper. A solid B-.

Frank Booth Memorial Blog Entry

Sandra "Driverface" Bullock brings the charm, of course. I liked that she was the bus driver. She helped save everybody, you guys! But then OF COURSE we can't leave well enough alone; Keanu, who has already saved her by SPOILER ALERT getting people off the bus, has to save her harder on a train. Ugh. Apparently Joss Whedon was a script doctor for Speed, and he overhauled the end, so what the hell, dude. I expect better from you. ANYWAY: none of that was Sandy's fault. In the hilarious words of an IMDB commenter: "Sandra is a delight to watch as well as hear - she has a voice you literally can wrap yourself up in." Perhaps not, but a fine performance nonetheless.

1994 was a crazy time: Dennis Hopper was credited above this powerhouse.

But, hands down, the two best characters: the Out-of-Towner (Alan Ruck) and Ortiz (Carlos Carrasco). The Out-of-Towner is, as you'd expect, a white-bread middle America kinda guy visiting L.A. for the first time and look what happens to him. Ortiz is the laconic Angeleno sitting next to him. Their chemistry is fan-fucking-tastic. Out-of-Towner says shit like, "Your tax dollars are paying [police] salaries! If we die, they gotta take a pay cut!" and Ortiz is all "LULZ O'CLOCK." Speed is pretty fun, but it would have been a MODERN CLASSIC if these two had been the main characters. An odd couple story about two wacky dudes stuck on a bus that might blow up! WHAT A GREAT MOVIE.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.