Friday 2 May 2014

"Brick Mansions" (The Guardian 02/05/14)


Brick Mansions **
Dir: Camille Delamarre. With: Paul Walker, David Belle, RZA. 91 mins. Cert: 15

Visionary-turned-pablum-producer Luc Besson here relocates 2004’s nifty parkour-based actioner District 13 to a crime- and cliché-ridden Detroit, where cop Paul Walker (in his last completed role) and the original’s David Belle are pursuing a megaton bomb, helpfully fitted with digital countdown clock. A thousand cuts per minute aim to speed us mindlessly past Besson’s usual chauvinism, political cynicism and dubious colour-coding – as in Taken, non-Caucasians are viewed with suspicion – while also chopping short exactly those moves this set-up was meant to showcase. The still-showing The Raid 2 got most of its kicks in situ; this deploys a lot of edit-suite trickery to generate only moderate dynamism. 

Brick Mansions is now showing in cinemas nationwide.

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