Take your B12, skip your B13

I'm a Luc Basson fan and have been for some time. As a writer and director he's made some fabulous movies, including The Fifth Element, The Transporter, La Femme Nikita, and one of my personal favorites Wasabi. So I've been psyched for some time to see District B13. Regrettably I then rented and viewed the film, and suffered for it. B13 ultimately a look at French culture and a political commentary about how France is losing contact with the forces that made her a great democracy. This theme - the center of old France rebelling against immigrants and hoodlums has become a major theme in French entertainment.

I first really noticed this in the success of Notre Dame de Paris, the most recent musical version of the old Hugo book. The ultimate struggle in the musical was not over Esmeralda, but what to do with these gypsies who've helped build Notre Dame, but now want to live in France. Authority (Phoebus and Fleur) drive the out and kill them, showing the cracks of immigration in modern France.

B13 has the same topic, but is far more heavy handed. This could have been alright, a lot can be forgiven in a film that is basically an action flick. But B13 spends to long setting up it's (admittedly awesome) protagonists, and then spends the rest of the film grandstanding about political issues and equality. There was potential here for a film that makes a message about the direction that France is heading through an entertaining action film, but it was never realized.