District B13

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District 13

Directed by	Pierre Morel
Produced by	Luc Besson Bernard Grenet
Written by	Luc Besson Bibi Naceri
Starring	Cyril Raffaelli David Belle Tony D'Amario Bibi Naceri Dany Verissimo
Distributed by	EuropaCorp (France)
Release date(s)	November 10, 2004
Running time	85 minutes
Language	French
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IMDb profile

David Belle in a chase sequence from Banlieue 13.

District B13 (District 13 in the UK) is the title of the English-subtitled release of a 2004 French action film, Banlieue 13, directed by Pierre Morel and produced by Luc Besson.^[1]

The film is notable for its depiction of parkour in a number of stunt sequences that were completed without the use of wires or computer generated effects. Because of this, the film has drawn comparisons to the popular Thai film Ong-Bak.

David Belle, founder of parkour, appears in the film as one of the main characters.

1 Plot
2 Political context
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Set in 2010, the film is about Leïto (David Belle), a resident of the walled-off ghetto of District 13 (Banlieue 13) in Paris. District 13 is overrun with gangsters, guns, and drugs; there is little or no police authority. Education is completely nonexistent. It is the director's view of "[w]hat the suburbs might be in a few years if we make the wrong decisions and don't change things."

With many of the local gangs terrorizing and destroying the community, Leïto makes an effort to preserve at least some of what's left of District 13. This means upsetting the local gangs and mob bosses. When Taha, one of the bosses, responds by kidnapping his sister Lola, Leïto takes action.

He infiltrates Taha's base and holds the boss hostage, forcing the mobster's gang to let Leïto and his sister go. Leïto and Lola hand Taha over to the police, but the police chief they deal with isn't thrilled to see them as the station is closing down and he is retiring that night. The situation worsens when Taha's gang drive up to the station with heavy weapons, outnumbering and outgunning the police. The chief prefers not to face off with the gangsters, so he sets Taha free and locks Leïto up 'to save paperwork'. Taha takes Lola with him and leaves. In anger Leïto kills the chief and is imprisoned.

Meanwhile, undercover police agent Damien (Cyril Raffaelli), introduced in a separate backstory involving a notable infiltration of and explosive/acrobatic exit from an illegal organization, is ordered by his boss to infiltrate District 13 and diffuse or recover a "clean bomb" missile stolen by Taha's gang. His orders indicate he is to befriend Leïto, a resident who knows the ghetto inside and out. Although Damien attempts to get out of doing such a mission that is out of his nature, he accepts.

Right off the bat Leïto realizes Damien's true intentions, and makes it clear he wants no part of it. Afterwards Damien confronts Leïto in a factory next to the location of the bomb. He offers to help save Leïto's sister if Leïto helps him recover the bomb. They make the deal, and Leïto cals Taha, who sends his gang armed and with orders to bring back "the cop" and Leïto.

Once in front of Taha, Damien attempts to buy off the missile from him. K2, Taha's henchman antes up the price to 20 million Euros. Damien accepts and calls his headquarters to wire the money to Taha's account.

To his surprise, headquarters confidentially declines wiring over the money (saying that it's way over their budget) and tells them to "Find another way." and hangs up the phone. It would take thirty minutes for the transfer to go through, so Taha orders the two men into the "waiting room" (What appears to be a sleeping quarters for the rest of the gang.)

Leïto knows of an escape tunnel he made in the bathroom by the elevator a long time ago. The elevator is located on the way to Taha's office, so Leïto and Damien agree to trick the guards into bringing them back to Taha's office for a negotiation.

While walking down the narrow hallway to Taha's office (surrounded front and back by about half a dozen armed guards), Leïto signals "Let's go now." and a fight sequence initiates as the two make their way towards the bathroom.

The entrance to the tunnel is in under a toilet in a stall, and the two kick through into an underground tunnel. Another fight-chase-escape sequence occurs. Meanwhile back in Taha's office, his accountant/hacker informs him that while the gangsters were waiting for Damien's headquarters to "set up" the transfer to Taha's account in the Bahamas, the police had traced back though all of Taha's bank accounts and emptied them. The accountant/hacker then leaves Taha's office and by extension his employment.

Taha's guards, now seeing that Taha has no means to pay them, promptly turn and kill him, now looking at a surprised K2 as their boss. K2 and his gang then take it upon themselves to find Damien and Leïto.

The prolonged chase ends with the two lead characters surrounded at gunpoint. Instead of taking revenge the gang members ask for Damien and Leïto to deactivate the bomb and save District 13. Damien and Leïto fight off 'Yeti', a huge man belonging to Taha who was stationed there to guard the bomb.

When Leïto overhears headquarters giving Damien the code (9293709B13), his already existing suspicions of Damien's leaders grow as he recognizes certain patterns in the code. 9293, the area code of District 13, 709 (September 7th), the day's date, and B13, short for District 13.

But Damien insists it is merely a coincidence and that they don't have time to argue over such things. But Leïto is sure something is not right with orders being given by the headquarters, and attempts to stop Damien. He throws him a few yards back, and they then engage in a highly-complex martial arts fight-sequence as the timer goes down on the missile.

Damien and Leïto persist in insisting that the other one is wrong. Damien manages to get in every digit except the last digit, 3, into the panel as Leïto tries to hold him back.

Damien's finger reaches only a few inches from the panel, as both grow weary and tired. The timer begins dropping down from 10, and Leïto's sister Lola jumps onto Damien with her handcuffed hands clenching him down. She insists, "I trust my brother more than you."

Damien seems to accept that he's not going to get in the last digit, and their fate lies in the true intentions of his government.

The timer stops, and they all watch as the machine's timer goes blank and no explosion or damage occurs. Damien puts his hands over his face at the realization that Leïto's suspicions were correct.

As they come down from the roof holding the container (bomb inside) at each end, the gang surprisingly lets them go without any bloodshed.

Back in Paris, the two political leaders ponder as to why there is no word of the bomb exploding or any visible explosion in the first place. They pause and hear the sounds of fighting going on in the hallway, only to have Damien and Leïto themselves break through the door carrying the container holding the bomb up to the politician's desk.

Damien and Leïto pretend they forgot the code, and then slowly start typing it in as they "remember it". The politicians beg them to stop "before it explodes all of Paris", thus admitting that the code wasn't to defuse the bomb, but to prime it for explosion.

After getting out the confessions that the two corrupt politicians intended to blow up the hopeless District 13, Leïto points to a cameraman on the adjacent roof. Damien then picks up the remote and turns on the TV to show the exact conversation replaying on TV to the public's eye. Leïto and Damien leave the room with a satisfied grin as the two politicians loosen their neck ties with sweat running down their faces.

Finally Damien drops Leïto and Lola at the entrance to District 13, reminding them that they still have the option of staying in Paris. But Leïto insists his place belongs in District 13.

Schools and authority start reappearing in District 13 as the wall comes down and hopes for a brighter future unfold.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Political context

In 2005, the year after the film's release in France, major riots erupted throughout the real "banlieues" and housing projects of Paris, then spreading to other towns. The riots and car burnings received worldwide press attention and were seen by many as an expression of anger and hopelessness from the primarily Arab and black residents of the city's poorer areas. These so-called suburbs ("banlieues") outly the central districts of Paris, although as opposed to world of the film, no wall exists to separate them into an official ghetto. However, as in the film, these areas are widely seen as ignored or feared by more prosperous elements in French society. They are often under the control of gangs, and poverty and unemployment are rampant, many blaming them on employers' discrimination. Set only six years in the future from its release date, the banlieues of the film were obviously based on modern day reality.

The French government struck back at the rioters with harsh rhetoric, with minister Nicolas Sarkozy causing the greatest controversy. Some who sympathized with the rioters' concerns compared the response of Sarkozy to the politicians in the film. Sarkozy used a similar word "scum" to the word used by the corrupt politician in the film to characterize residents of Banlieue 13, before that character reveals his intent to incinerate them with a neutron bomb.

The alleged indifference and even outright hostility to banlieue-dwellers from the central government, to the extent of possibly conspiring to destroy them, has even been seen to find parallels in the Bush Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., with some having raised claims of deliberate destruction of levees so as to flood the Lower 9th Ward (notably seen in Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke).