Brick Mansions

With a little more effort, Brick Mansions could have worked as a comedy.  As it is, it's an energetic little action movie that gets by a little bit on some of its goofy charm.  Films like this are why I don't have a star rating system for the movies I watch.  I wouldn't know how to rate movies like this - movies that are undeniably trash, yet left me with a silly grin on my face.

The movie is a remake of a French film called District B13, but will forever be remembered as the final film Paul Walker completed before his death last November.  Here, we get to see Walker pretty much do what he did best in his career - play a fairly bland straight man in an over the top action film filled with colorful characters.  It's a role he perfected in the Fast and the Furious franchise, and he pretty much gets to do the same here.  He does get to pull off some impressive stunts and a few funny one-liners, but unfortunately for his fans, he's constantly in the shadow of his co-star, David Belle, who also starred in the original film, and is making his English language debut here.  Just watching Belle perform his physical and martial art stunts in the film's stunning opening action sequence automatically lets you know that this is pretty much his movie.  Is it sad that Walker is constantly being shown up by his co-star in what would be his last completed film?  Kind of.  But at least he has some good action buddy chemistry with Belle.

Walker plays Damien Collier, an undercover police officer working in Detroit in the not-too-distant-future, where massive city walls have been built around the housing projects of the city, hoping to keep the criminals and drug lords locked inside.  This section of the city, known as the Brick Mansions, is ruled over a drug lord named Tremaine Alexander (rap artist RZA), who has recently gotten his hands on a missile, and plans to blow up part of the city unless his demands are met.  The missile, of course, comes with one of those big red digital timers on the side of it, that counts down how many minutes there are until it takes off.  Why a missile would need something like this, I don't know.  Then again, logic has no place in this movie.  Damien is sent into the projects undercover to shut down the weapon, and must team up with a convict named Lino (Belle) if he wants to survive.

Turns out both men have a reason to go after Tremaine.  Damien has been hunting him down for years, because the guy killed his father.  As for Lino, Tremaine has recently kidnapped his ex-girlfriend (Catalina Denis) that he still has feelings for.  The two guys argue and banter comically the whole time they're being blasted at by Tremaine's army of thugs that patrol the streets.  A lot of the dialogue between the two is pretty dumb, but some of it is intentionally funny, which hints that screenwriter Luc Besson knows just how off the wall his story is.  There is some good action throughout, though nothing quite as good as the opening scene, where Belle leaps over bad guys, tosses himself through windows, and hurdles across city rooftops.   There's a catfight or two between Lino's girlfriend and Tremaine's lead female thug, a lot of gunfire and explosions, and a few scenes where Paul Walker has to get behind the wheel of a car that might make some audience members uncomfortable in hindsight.

Is Brick Mansions art, or even a good movie?  Far from it.  But I'd be lying if I didn't say I enjoyed myself just a little.  It moves at a brisk pace, it has some well executed stunts, and while it may be pretty dumb, it has enough of a sense of humor for me to think the movie is in on the joke.  If you want a movie where the good guys do a lot of fighting with their fists and feet, and teach the bad guys a lesson by the end, you can do a heck of a lot worse than this. 

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