BRICK MANISIONS is a remake of BANLIEUE
13 aka DISTRICT
13. As one of the final movies to star
Paul Walker, it is just OK with some great action sequences and yet a little
more story could have made it a fantastic movie instead of one you can wait to
rent.
BRICK MANSIONS shifts the setting from Paris
2010 to Detroit
2018 where a housing project called Brick Mansions is walled off by the city
with police monitoring who come and goes.
The mayor of Detroit hatches a plan to redevelop Brick Mansions. His
plans intersects with the revenge plans
of an undercover narcotics detective looking to bring down all of the men
responsible for the drug trade coming out of Brick Mansions with the final target
being the man he believes killed his father- Tremaine Alexander (Rza). Then
you have Lino (David Belle) who wants
to clean up Brick Mansions twenty kilos of drugs at a time. The gangs
are after him and he is thrown in
prison. He must team up with the
undercover cop to retrieve and deactivate a neutron bomb that the gangs have
captured.
The movie starts with some good set up with some
good action
sequences, but the screenplay could have used more story. I like seeing David
Belle in action again
with his Pakour skills. He played a
similar character called Leito in the two DISTRICT 13 movies. I do
like the fight scenes between Lino’s ex-girlfriend and the gang chick. BRICK
MANISIONS makes me want to go watch DISTRICT 13 again (which I own on DVD) so
I can compare it to the remake. People
may feel oversentimental for this remake due to the untimely death of Paul
Walker and this being one of his final films.
Still you may want to wait to rent it unless you’re a big Paul Walker or
David Belle fan. It’s not a bad remake,
but BRICK MANSIONS isn’t a great film either.
This review is ©4-27-2014 David Blackwell and
cannot be
reprinted without permission. Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com
Like Enterline Media on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/enterlinemediaweb
and follow on tumblr at http://enterlinemedia.tumblr.com
