Nerd Movie Reviews

Brick Mansions Review

Let’s think of another kind of house made out of bricks.

It seems like every time I see another Luc Besson film I go off on a “what the hell happened to this guy” diatribe so I will skip it this time around.  I think I am done wondering what happened to his talent and instead am wondering if he ever had any talent.  I think it entirely possible his particular brand of bad movie making skills hit at the exact right time when that style of crap was considered in vogue.  Either that or he spent most of his life making his few good films and has been coasting ever since (I am not discounting the possibility of some kind of serious brain injury, however).

As a fan of the Fast and Furious series I feel bad dumping on Paul Walkers last film.  I know he liked working on it and I wish he had come out with something better but honestly this film is junk.  It’s everything bad in modern action films plus somehow Luc keeps using his time machine to travel back to 2004 when parkour was still considered cool.  I saw District B13 (I think it was called Barrio 13) in 2007 and enjoyed it but even then it seemed dated.  Seeing it done again in English watered down to PG-13 with the same dude but about 100 times hokier did not make for a good movie experience.

The last few Luc Besson projects I have seen have convinced me he actually has no understanding of American culture and really should stick to doing French films.  He looks at the problems in our country and proceeds to think “Wouldn’t it be cool/terrible if they did this?” and proceeds to set up his film based on that without considering the fact that it could never actually happen.  Sorry, Luc, but mafia murderers in witness protection do not live lavish lifestyles in Normandy on the US dime (and get away with murder), the CIA does not have carte blanche to run rampant through France, 10 year old girls cannot life 300 pound manhole covers, US politicians are not so devoid of morals that they think dropping a neutron bomb in downtown Detroit is the fast track to urban gentrification, and the ability to jump fences and climb walls does not translate into the ability to dodge several thousand bullets shot at your main characters.

Let me expound a little on that last one and a phenomenon I have seen in certain foreign directors before.  You see, whether you are for guns or against them growing up in America you learn to respect firearms.  To understand their destructive power you either need to fire off a few thousand rounds or be in constant danger of having them fired at you.  Foreign directors from countries where guns are much more controlled I have noticed tend to treat guns as something a few martial arts tricks can easily get around.  Being an expert in parkour does not give you the ability to dodge bullets constantly.

This is all the the detriment of the film of course.  The measure of a hero is in the strength of his adversaries.  Every time the two main guys jump, flip, and kick another 20 well armed thugs into PG-13 friendly unconsciousness the tension of the film drains another few gallons.  The best movie characters are ones who could die at any moment from any of the bad guys and take a beating just doing it. Just compare John McClane (from the first movie of course) to any modern action hero where they mow down dozens of bad guys who seem to feel the need to actually aim is purely for squares and you will see what I mean (in fact, compare John McClane from the first Die Hard to John McClane from A Good Day To Die Hard and you will understand).  The weaker the villains the weaker the hero, and the villains in this film are weak.

For that matter the main villain, Tremaine, was woefully ill used.  I can honestly say I liked RZA in this role far better than any film he has done to date (especially the Man with the Iron Fists) and had his character been better written I would have like him a lot.  The problem is his character kept shifting back and forth from violent street thug, Robin Hood, business man, gangster poet, and sociopath.  The shifts would happen rapidly and always at the exact moment to best propel the ridiculous plot.

This film is not exactly a model for positive racial relations either.  The good guys are all white, the gangsters are all assorted minorities (mostly black), and the few white criminals are all more blue collar brainy types.  However, Luc has never been one for steering clear of racial stereotypes (Taken-white girl kidnapped by Albanians to be sold as a sex slave to Arabs, the Professional had 0.0 non white characters, and we don’t even want to get started on his treatment of the Mangalores in the Fifth Element).  The real question is is this a purposeful statement about the future socio economic status of race relations in run down American cities or is he just being a lazy writer.  I bet you can guess which way my opinion leans.

For all that it is better than the last few movies he has done.  I didn’t feel the need to punch someone on the way out after I did when I saw the Family, and I didn’t have to find my motivation to keep my higher brain functions operating like I did after 3 Days to Kill.  The fast pace of the story kept it from being boring and if you had a sudden bout of amnesia and forgot the last 12 years you would probably think all the parkour pretty neat.  David Belle is an amazing parkour stunt man and does most of it himself.  (Stunts image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)

Anyway, let’s get this story over with, shall we?  It is Detroit in the near future and the crime ridden tenement (block? building? neighborhood?  How much of Detroit is a bad Escape from New York knockoff?) known as Brick Mansions has had a giant wall erected around it to keep the criminals feeding on each other and the hapless poor that live there (that’s the American spirit!  Although since the residents of Brick Mansions seem to go in and out of the gates with impunity what was this supposed to do exactly?  Other than give criminals the perfect place to hide out).  Lino (I thought his name was Leito?  Oh, that was the last time Luc made this movie.  David Belle-District B13, the Family, Babylon A.D.) is a local parkour vigilante who has stolen a ton of some white powder that may or may not be drugs (isn’t PG-13 fun?) and is flushing it down the toilet for some reason (I guess he wants to clean up the street?  Not a lot of explaining going on in this film).  Local gangster K2 (Gouchy Boy-Maximum Conviction, Cosmopolis, Max Payne) shows up with cartoonish S&M sidekick Rayzah (Ayisha Issa-Warm Bodies, the Immortals, L’appât) and about 100 more stereotypes to get it back.  Lino run, jumps, and kicks his way to freedom.

The head gangster Tremaine (RZA-the Man with the Iron Fists, Pacific Rim, Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai) is annoyed at his underlings losing his powder so they decide to kidnap Lino’s ex girlfriend Lola (Catalina Denis-Le Mac, Corsair, Go Fast) in a diner in broad daylight outside of this DMZ.  Lino breaks in to rescue her in another exciting chase scene where for some reason a Browning .50 cal manages to specifically NOT turn a Mustang into a small pile of scrap metal and bloody meat (remember what I said about Luc not really respecting or understanding guns).  He manages to get her to the Detroit PD checkpoint where he is betrayed by local cops on Tremaine’s payroll.  Tremaine takes Lola away for some reason (? Sex slave?  Someone to listen to his megalomaniacal rants?  Some form of motivation for the characters might be in order) and Lino kills the corrupt cop.

Meanwhile undercover cop Damian (Paul Walker-the whole Fast and Furious series, Pawn Shop Chronicles, Takers) busts a local drug dealer in a high speed chase.  The next day he is called into the mayors office and told that a neutron bomb capable of killing several square blocks of city being transported through Detroit was captured by local Brick Mansion gansters and has a special case that will activated the bomb in 12 hours if anyone unauthorized opens the case (WTF Luc???   That’s your plot device???) and he needs to sneak into the hood and deactivate it.  In order to do so he needs the help of Lino (Detroit PD must take a pretty soft view of cop killers).

Damian is thrown in a moving van with Lino as a fellow prisoner and they manage to take over the van by throwing the two officers driving it out onto the freeway at speed (I’m sure they were fine).  Lino smells Damian out as a cop and they fight.  Lino leaves Damian to be killed by some locals but naturally Damian escapes and convinces Lino to help him (those cops who where were thrown out of a moving vehicle will no doubt be happy to know their sacrifice in the name of maintaining the whole Damian criminal facade was completely unnecessary).

At that point Damian and Lino jump, kick, punch, and flip their way through uncounted hordes of gun wielding thugs (how does any business make enough money to have a couple of hundred dudes lying around playing Xbox instead of actually producing something?).  Rayzah does some kinky BDSM stuff with Lola in order to do nothing for the story (PG-13 BDSM, BTW).  Tremaine has figured out that the bomb is counting down and straps it to an old missile they happened to have lying around.

Damian and Lino shoot the missile launcher (something that the mayor and his buddies are immediately aware of.  How, exactly?) and the two get to the bomb to input the deactivation code.  SPOILER ALERT It turns out that the mayor of Detroit actually needed the neutron bomb to go off in order to murder a few hundred thousand people so he could develop some kind of downtown shopping center.  Talk about extreme real estate.  The code that they gave Damian to deactivate the bomb is actually the code to activate it and in a truly stupid twist is also the zip code for Brick Mansions.

Let’s talk about how dumb this is.  OK, assuming the mayor of Detroit has access to weapons of mass destruction and the the lack of morals to use it on his constituents why the hell would they use the zip code for the area they are trying to destroy as the activation key?  Does he have some kind of dark sense of humor and is willing to risk his entire plot to have a laugh at all the people he is about to murder?  For that matter what kind of bomb needs to be activated by a keypad on the bomb itself?  No one has ever heard of remote detonation?  The military is in the habit of building bombs that require someone literally committing suicide in order to set it off?  Also are they really in the habit of storing bombs in cases that activate when the bomb when the case is opened?  OK, now let’s assume his plan worked and the bomb went off.  Does he not think there would be about 100,000 FBI, CIA, and DHS agents investigating every aspect of an event like that?  Not to mention about 100,000,000 internet conspiracy trolls.  And then the land goes to a development company that he happens to own.  Nothing suspicious there.  Is that how property is transferred in the USA?  Kill the residents and then build a mall on it?  Also neutron bombs kill people with radiation so I guess you will have a ton of money on power bills as everything will have a natural glow.  Is the bomb set to stop its blast radius at exactly the Brick Mansions wall?  Also do you really think people are going to be happy working and shopping on the mass grave of hundreds of thousands of people?  Hell, we don’t even build on Native American graveyards.  Did none of you ever see Pet Cemetery?

Sorry for that tangent but in a business where I am inundated with stupid evil plans and plot devices that one truly stood out as the stupidest.  It’s also the most unnecessary.  There are any number of other plot devices that could have worked without making my brain swell up inside my skull.  The story ends up with another really dumb hokey ending.

The stars:

If you are into parkour this movie will work for you.  Let me know how your MySpace page is doing, and watch out for that new company called Facebook.  One star.  I will have to give one for Paul Walker.  I am sorry things went down for him like it did.  One star.  Catalina Denis is stunning, and for some reason her wholesome Americana diner uniform looked a lot like what a stripper Catholic school girl would wear.  One star.  If mindless action, car chases, and wildly inaccurate gunfire is your thing welcome to heaven.  One star.  Total: four stars.

The black holes:

The whole plot couldn’t be stupider if it had been about the Garbage Pail Kids conquering the world.  I’m not kidding when I say it was insultingly dumb.  Two black holes.  A bonus black hole for using the zip code as the suicide bomb activation code.  One black hole.  Every time Damian and Lino managed to defeat another 20 guys with guns without firing a shot themselves your interest in the film evaporates even more.  If there is no chance of them being killed who cares?  One black hole.  This film fell into a PG-13 sinkhole and never climbed back out.  One black hole.  As hot as Ayisha Issa is her character was truly laughable.  I’m pretty sure Luc put her in because he wanted something to jerk off to.  One black hole.  Racial stereotypes up the arse.  One black hole.  Tremaine’s inability to pick a character and stick with it.  One black hole.  Luc’s complete lack of understanding of American culture is both humerus and insulting.  We don’t make a lot of films about how much France sucks in French and open it in Paris (no we do it in English and open it here in the good old USA.  God Bless America!).  One black hole.  Total: nine black holes.

Total of 5 black holes.  A pretty poor score but like I said one of the best I have given a Luc project in a while.  Worth seeing at all?  Maybe if you dream of the day a group of parkour ninjas takes over the world.  Maybe if you are a Paul Walker fan (in that case go see any of the F&F movies IMO).  Maybe if you went to the movies drunk as hell and wandered into the wrong theater by accident.  Other than that not really.  Date movie?  Nope.  Bathroom break?  Well, if you are really into the story (I almost typed that sentence without bursting into laughter) I’d say the best point would be the BDSM scene between Lola and Rayzah.  It is way less fun and sexy as it sounds and does nothing but make you laugh at her character even more.

Thanks for reading.  I saw the Other Woman last night and will try to write it up later today.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  You can post comments on this film or my review here (although lately I am buried in spam so if I mass delete your note I apologize) and off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected].  Thanks for reading and have a great day.

“The Infamous Dave” Inman