Parkour! Parkour! No, this isn't that endearing episode of The Office; this is Brick Mansions, a film so bad it's fairly entertaining. Can a film have a more nonexistent plot than the Expendables franchise? If you would have asked me this a week ago, I would have laughed at the notion. Brick Mansions is to plot as Avatar is to special effects. The film is about an undercover narcotics agent Damien (Paul Walker) and Lino (Belle) an ex-con who team up and infiltrate the area of Detroit called Brick Mansions. Their mission is to stop an atomic bomb from destroying the city and to save Lino's baby mamma, of course. MacGruber would be proud.
I'm embarrassed to know this is Paul Walker's last film. It's a dud. This feels like a straight-to-DVD film. With Paul Walker's passing, this film was given more attention that it should have. The dialogue was wooden, the acting not much better. The only thing I found exhilarating was the opening sequence of the film that follows Lino wall jumping all over this city running away from Tremaine's (RZA) henchmen looking for their drug money.
Brick Mansions is a remake of the French film District B13. The screenplay is by the generally reliable Luc Besson, but he phoned in the script for this one. As for the direction, this was Camille Delamarre's first feature length film and it shows. The blame for the most part is with the script. The plot is spoon fed to the audience all the way through; plot holes try to be covered up with various flashback sequences. I felt like I was at a parody film for The Transporter, which, in my opinion, is already a parody in itself.
Do yourself a favor and skip this. If you want fond memories of Paul Walker, go watch Eight Below or Pleasantville.
