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Friday, April 25, 2014

MOVIE REVIEW Brick Mansions
 Flipping The Script, Brick By Brick, In Motown

David Belle as Lino and Paul Walker as Damien in "Brick Mansions", directed by Camille Delamarre.  Relativity/Europa
       
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Friday, April 25, 2014
"District 13", Pierre "Taken" Morel's 2004 action film from France, is the template for Camille Delamarre's "Brick Mansions", a routine but muddled action-drama about an impoverished district in Detroit under siege in 2018.  David Belle, who was in the original film, stars here as Lino, a convict living in Brick Mansions -- a nickname for the roughest neighborhoods in Motown.  Lino is one of the few residents who cares about his turf.  "Stop selling drugs to our people," Lino wearily tells Tremaine (RZA), a feared gangster who takes care of people in low and high places.  Paul Walker plays undercover detective Damien Collier, who lost his father in the Detroit police force years before.  Soon he and Lino will join forces to take Tremaine down.

Parkour, a technique of unaided, non-wire stunt work, is the biggest star of "Brick Mansions", a relentlessly cynical film that lives purely for furious action in the vein of Mr. Walker's "Fast And Furious" adventures.  In one scene as a red needle moves to the right of 80 on the speedometer of a car Mr. Walker's Damien is driving you can't help feeling discomfort, especially given the manner of the late actor's death.  Damien will crash a car, and you will wince again.  Other reasons to wince: the women of "Brick Mansions" are used solely as S&M play dolls, and for some reason bondage is part of a PG-13 film, one that feels like an R-rated exercise of high-speed ballet and caricature nonsense.  This resulting mess was co-written by Luc Besson, who also co-wrote "District 13".

The underlying theme of "Brick Mansions" is corruption, greed and deception everywhere, fueled and personified by Detroit's mayor (Bruce Ramsay), who must think that he's W. Wilson Goode.  When the mayor unconvincingly declares that he will take care of the people of Detroit you don't need the obligatory reaction shots to tell you that he's full of it. 

All is not what it seems in "Brick Mansions" though, and you never feel that the film knows what will happen next either.  The movie is as manic as the sudden, lightning-quick moves Mr. Belle makes between corridors, ceilings, rooftops and the smallest of openings.  Little thought apparently went into the screenplay, which on film looks as if it was hastily written.  Enemies and friends are interchangeable in Ms. Delamarre's film, and its last 15 minutes look more like a political campaign commercial or a swansong to Mr. Walker himself than a connection to the hour-plus-long episode that has gone before.   

Mr. Walker does much of what he did in the "Fast And Furious" films: play straight man to chaos, and coolly dispatch a string of dead-pan one-liners.  He fits right in with car scenes -- cars were his real-life passion -- and the director uses Mr. Walker for exactly what his routine and charismatic talents warrant.  RZA plays Tremaine as a flashy villain,  a ruthless, poetic man ultimately betrayed in some ways by the spirit of his own motives.  He says he cares about Detroit but it's an affirmation no less hollow than the mayor's.  Yet despite Tremaine's collection of sideshow henchmen and women, he has a good heart.  Tremaine, all showman and gangster chef, has entrances like those of prize fighters in the boxing ring.

To watch "Brick Mansions" is to watch a non-stop chain of stunts and twists that make little sense.  Before Chubby Checker can say "come on, let's twist again", the poor script does another inexplicable about-face. 

Also with: Gouchy Boy, Catalina Denis, Ayisha Issa, Carlo Rota, Richard Zeman.

"Brick Mansions" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of America for frenetic gunplay, violence and action throughout, language, sexual menace and drug material.  The film's running time is one hour and 30 minutes. 

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