Is "French Action Movie" an Oxymoron?

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!


Last night I saw the French action sensation, District B13. In the year 2010, police have walled off the worst parts of Paris to keep the criminals under control. However, all hell breaks loose when a group within the worst district of them all obtains an experimental nuclear device. It's up to two men--who both coincidentally practice the obscure French martial art/cardiovascular conditioning regimen known as parkour--to save the day and a waifish actress who is little more than a plot device in a short skirt.

The movie features incredible stunts, frenetic action, French hip hop, the most brutal slaying of a police officer I've ever seen on film, and the fastest and easiest recovery from heroin addiction ever portrayed. I highly recommend it to action junkies.

However, I was disappointed by the last thirty minutes of the movie, mainly because the first thirty minutes of the movie set the bar impossibly high. I think this is mainly due to a lack of imagination on the the part of the film makers. Here are some things they could have done to kick it up a notch...

1. You can't show a bad-ass henchman the entire movie, call him "K2", have him commit unspeakable acts of evil, then not have him fight one of the heroes. Shame, shame, shame! This fight is an imperative part of the movie, and it should be horrifying. If I had filmed it, it would have taken place in burning phone booth surrounded by fire ants, and, for no apparent reason, both combatants would have woks full of boiling oil. The rest writes itself.

2. Instead of fighting a morbidly obese, mongoloid eating machine to reach the bomb, they should have fought either:

a. A genetically engineered dinosaur, or...
b. Former Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug.

You can't spend an entire movie establishing that our heroes are the two fastest and most agile human specimens that our beret-sporting brethren have to offer, then expect us to be excited about them fighting somebody who will eventually die of natural causes in his own bathtub. They didn't even need to hit him. They could have just backed away slowly as he came after them and just waited for his heart to explode. A velociraptor solves this problem, as it can run up to 60 mph--or 100 kmh, as French velociraptors run in metric.

Kerri Strug would be able to keep up with them gymnastically, but mainly she is an alternative because I would enjoy seeing her beaten.

3. Jean Reno has to make a cameo.

4. Near the end of the film, German actors enter the scene. The French actors immediately surrender the movie to them.

5. The final fight between the two protagonists needed to include the following:

a. A puma--the cat, not the shoe.
b. Rabid ferrets duct-taped to the fighters' forearms.
c. Kerri Strug.
d. Every surface within a hundred yards needed to be either on fire (if flat) or filled with acid (if concave).
e. One of the two fighters doubles his own chances of winning the fight by voimiting up his own identical twin, which he has swallowed in a balloon for just such an occasion.
f. One of the fighters focuses his chi and turns pine cones into hand grenades.
g. Unpasteurized cheese.
h. Chuck Norris--preferably fighting Kerri Strug who is filled with acid and riding a puma.



Again, I highly recommend the movie. It's a better action film than you will see from Hollywood this year, and it should promote U.S.-French relations.

C'est incroyable! Allez! Vite! Vite, mes amis!

Je m'appelle Chuck Norris, et j'ai besoin de frapper Kerri Strug et sa grand chat!