One star. Rated PG-13, despite frenetic gunfire, relentless violence, profanity, drug content, sexual menace and racial epithets
By Derrick Bang
My 8-year-old nephew could have
written a better script.
 |
| Pinned down by an overhead sniper, Lino (David Belle, left) and Damien (Paul Walker) try to figure out their next move. It won't be hard; in a movie this daft, I'm sure they could just sprout wings and fly up to confront their attacker. |
I marvel at the fact that people
— in this case, Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri — got paid actual money to generate such
swill. This inept excuse for an action flick may not be as disgustingly
mean-spirited as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent Sabotage, but it’s just as stupid.
Actually, Brick Mansions isn’t even a movie; it’s just a big-screen talent
showcase for French parkour founder
David Belle, a fast-moving force of nature best known as a stunt coordinator on
films such as Transporter 2, Colombiana and The Family. Belle is the real star here, and — I cannot lie — his
jaw-dropping free running, climbing, jumping, hopping and bopping are a sight
to behold.
Poor Paul Walker — the late Paul
Walker — may be top-billed, but he’s little more than a shadow in Belle’s wake.
And both of them are ill-served
by this limp-noodle project from Besson, the French movie machine — he also co-produced
this junker — who dashes off scripts, individually or collaboratively, like
grocery lists. And, frankly, filming a grocery list might have given us a
better plot.
Besson has delivered numerous
enjoyable hits, from La Femme Nikita
and The Transporter to Taken. But he’s also responsible for a
lot of disappointing junk, including recent efforts such as Lockout and this year’s Kevin Costner
vehicle, 3 Days to Kill.
Brick Mansions actually is an American remake
of an earlier Besson/Naceri script, 2004’s District
13. Belle played the same character in that version — same name, even —
which was set in the “futuristic” Paris ghettos of 2010, where an undercover
cop and an ex-thug (Belle’s part) teamed up to infiltrate a criminal gang in
order to defuse a neutron bomb.
Imagine. I managed to type that
last sentence with a straight face.
