Cyril RaffaelliDistrict B13 [Blu-ray]

Great movie, there’s just more depth in the English speaking version for me

If you like physical, non-CGI'ed stunts, this is a perfect way to spend a little under two hours. No one is taking home any awards for acting or script writing, but Raffaelli and Belle make a good buddy-flick team, and the stunts are incredible. Raffaelli's choreography is fluid and innovative, and Belle shows the viewer exactly why he's called Speed-Air-Man in France (say it fast, and you'll get the reference).To make a not-so-long story shorter: Do-gooding ghetto dweller (Leïto/David Belle) becomes a thorn in the side of the local gang lord (Taha/Bibi Naceri), and ends up thrown in jail because the cops are corrupt. Fast forward six months, and do-gooding cop (Damien/Cyril Raffaelli) needs an escort through the hazardous B13 to recover a stolen nuclear missle. Leïto initially prefers Damien drop dead, but reluctantly teams up with him to rescue Leïto's sister Lola who was taken by Taha six months before.Again, the plot is not the draw here; it's the action sequences that take center stage. To their credit, Bibi Naceri does an entertaining turn as the big baddie, there's ample comic relief from Tony D'Amario (who sadly passed away in 2005) as henchman #1, "K2," and Raffaelli and Belle accomplish a passable level of acting that took other action stars, for example Schwarzenegger, multiple films to achieve.Now that we've addressed the good, onto the bad: the audio dub on this movie is HORRIBLE (yes, the adjective is deserving of all caps). My preference is for subtitles anyway, but for no reason I can discern, Magnolia closed-captioned the dub instead of *translating* the french. Merde! Also, I couldn't care less about the hideous box cover, but the menus are loud, ugly and difficult to navigate. Silver lining? At least they properly subtitled the hour long making-of bonus feature.Should Magnolia release the 2009 sequel, I'm hoping that they scrap the audio dub altogether for a proper subtitling job and give us more extras with Raffaelli and Belle.

Those people who loved director Pierre Morel's surprise 2009 smash  Taken [Blu-ray ] would do well to check out his first movie DISTRICT B13, which is even more loaded with great action and stunts, plus is not as predictable. Unlike TAKEN, which takes about a third of its runtime to catch up to its title and is slow going until it does so, this film is a total rush from beginning to end and action fans will be pleased. Though the story is involving, you don't nessescarily need to understand all of the dialogue in order to understand what is going on because of its action-oriented nature, so people who are norally scared of forigen language movies shouldn't shy away from this particular title. If you do, you'll be missing a tremenously exciting romp which is refreshing because of its decided lack of much computer graphics in the action sequences.However, this Blu-ray release is extremely questionable because the only form of subtitles on this French film are closed captions for the hearing impared, which contain unintentionally hillarious descriptions of every sound effect and physical action in the movie in addition to a translation of the dialogue. This is doubtlessly helpful for customers who are hearing impared and should be included, but should not be the only option available because it gets fairly annoying very quickly for viewers who don't need that kind of description. Because the limited theatrical release featured a perfectly normal subtitle track, its exclusion here is both puzzling and highly bothrsome. The only other option for viewing the film is a poor English dub which serves as the default soundtrack (unless you are fluent in French and can leave the subtitles completely off.) Unfortunately, even with Pierre Morel's rising popularity, this is a older release now and I highly doubt it will be corrected. I assume the regular DVD version suffers from the same problem but can't confirm that because I have never seen it in that form.It's still a fun movie and very much worth watching if you can get past this issue, but be forwarned when making your purchasing choices. I definately watch the movie less than I would if it had a proper subtitle track.

This movie does NOT have the best story line or dialog. Point-blank the only real reason to watch this movie is to see a wonderful display of Parkour (also known as Freestyle Running/Walking. Google it).PLOT: in the future cities get worse, blah blah blah. The worst section is known as District B13. One of the main characters Leito, is from District B13. He gets sent to prison for killing a man. Later on he tries to save his sister with the conditional help of the other main character (and founder of Parkour) who's using him to help find and defuse a bomb that is supposed to be somewhere in the district. I'm not using names because they're not important.once again, the ONLY reason to watch this movie is because of the incredible no-wire stunts that they do. some serious don't-try-this-at-home jumps, flips, and fighting. If you've seen Die Hard with a Vengeance, the founder of Parkour is the white-blond haired guy who's jumping around the pipes when Bruce Willis is in the ventilation system. the one that Bruce calls a G-d monkey. This movie is seriously worth watching if you love a good action scene that involves incredible stunt work without the use of wires. think: Jackie Chan on speed, and you might get an idea of what goes on.

I saw this years ago and bought it to share. The movies isn't great, the squalor urban environment is predictable and inconsistent. The urban running segments are the best though copied by James Bond movie shortly after. These are better.

It was great. Best movie ever!!!

What more can you say about this film, except I could not wait for the second (Ultimatum).Free running taken to it's extreme along with martial arts made this film so enjoyable to watch. It comes as an english version which is ok but I watched it again in it's original french and enjoyed it even more (maybe because I could follow the story line much better having already seen it in english), watching it in english the first time was very strange as the accents did not seem right for the characters, had they had french accents instead of ,I think they were predominately 'Cockney' I personally think the film would have worked better in english, I did'nt think it did. Story wise has been done before with slight differences in it's modern up to date outlook. Two main characters one born and brought up within the confines of the district, the other a paris cop both work together to bring down a corrupt government department. You could tell the story within 5 minutes of the film starting but the action is just so gripping it pulls you along and before you know it it is over. Again what more can I say. SUPERB

Was what I expected good story line but short on action it is French movie. The English version does not match the lips should be sub title instead..

Wrong zone - cannot read it without changing zone

You'd expect that the blu ray version of this film would offer regular subtitles for those of us who want to see it in French, like on the DVD, and not only subtitles for the hearing impaired, like on this blu ray.

Good Movie