Brick Mansions

Camille Delamarre’s Brick Mansions is a collection of nearly everything wrong with action movies. Actually, scratch that. It’s everything wrong with action movies 10 years ago. It’s an extremely regressive remake of the 2004 French film District B13, the movie that, very briefly, tried to make parkour a thing in cinema. Its fight scenes are jumbled, Gordian knots of quick, needless edits, jittery camerawork and excessive use of high-speed shutter. The plot hits the sweet spots of both idiotic and convoluted.

The easiest way to explain the ways in which Brick Mansions falls apart is to compare it side-by-side with Gareth Evans’ The Raid 2. The two films intersect on a fundamental level in terms of the fight scenes and car chases, but that is where the overlap begins and ends. Evans’ movie is ambitious in scope and sophisticated in its structure and fight choreography. Brick Mansions is none of these things. There’s no foresight, no vision, just a jumbled pile of forgettable action scenes. It’s a film lacking in imagination, a deficiency that, despite being an hour shorter than Evans’ film, makes Brick Mansions feel infinitely longer.

A lot of this is due to an incredibly meandering plot that takes about half the runtime to kick in. The idea here is that Detroit has fallen into a pit of lawlessness, and the most ruthless parts of town have been walled up to keep the riff-raff out. Paul Walker plays Damien, an undercover cop who wants nothing more than to take down scary drug lord Tremaine (RZA), who rules over many of the brick mansions that make up the cordoned off area. Damien gets his shot at taking down Tremaine when it’s discovered he’s accidentally hijacked a nuke that’s set to go off. So with the help of convict and Brick Mansion resident Lino (David Belle of the original District B13), Damien’s off to get his wish.

The film plays like a lesser version of The Wire and Escape from New York (1981). The various plot points make no sense, and this nuclear bomb serves as the ultimate McGuffin, seemingly popping up out of nowhere. Even the world they inhabit is bunk. With nary a spiked shoulder pad or leather codpiece, this isn’t even a stylish dystopia. What’s left is the husk of a noisy, mindless action movie that spins its wheels until it’s time for the credits to roll and your money’s already gone. Rated PG-13 for frenetic gunplay, violence and action throughout, language, sexual menace and drug material.

Playing at Carmike 10, Carolina Cinemas, Epic of Hendersonville, Regal Biltmore Grande.