There's fine lines between bad, really bad, and so-bad-it's-good films. Then occasionally the quality dips so far below so-bad-it's-good it becomes so bad it can't be real can it? And you're no longer laughing at it, but somehow with it, again. It's like watching a best friend's final major project, on a course they're already failing, in a subject they're useless at, but they love it anyway, so you're swept along and you support them regardless.
Really that's the only compliment I can give Brick Mansions, I'm legitimately entertained by how bad it is. Don't get me wrong, I'll never watch it again. But at times I let out a few giggles and some of the cliche ridden, expository 'this is what I'm thinking' dialogue and the more baffling and ridiculous plot moments made me chortle out loud. The honest truth of it though is it verges so severely on the parodic there is nothing - and I mean nothing - you can take seriously about it.
District B13 (Banlieue 13) was fine. It was watched because it featured the very en vogue godfathers of parkour, David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli, doing their business like a pair of French urban Jackie Chans. The premise was interesting, the filming tight and controlled and it 'was what it was', a French urban parkour actioner, no more no less. Brick Mansions is an entirely unnecessary American remake a decade after any interest has waned, and it just feels...pointless. In fact, if it serves any purpose at all it is to demonstrate the nonsensical reliance by "Hollywood" on remaking foreign language films based purely on the idea that an English speaking audience won't watch subtitles. And as if to really nail home the insensitivity of this whole notion the returning hero, David Belle, is regularly mocked by American characters for being French - not entirely unpardonable - and yet his entire dialogue is dubbed over with an American accent. Which is not only unpardonable but slightly racist. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Making sense appears to be so low down on the agenda it may as well stay home with a hot water bottle and cup of tea. The overall plot/storyline/sequence of events is so haphazard it's simultaneously simplistic and overly complicated; the acting is beyond bad; characters are ill defined and shallow, and their societal hierarchies are first, cliched, and then, weak; and every single line of dialogue is a description of a characters thoughts, actions or intents, and sometimes all three. Example: Paul Walker and David Belle meet in a van, then escape with the van. Each man wants the van for his own purpose. A fight ensues. During this fight Belle states "Wait, I need this van" (*punch punch kick*) Walker: "Are you trying to jack me?" (*kick punch kick*) Belle: "I need to use this van" (*kicky kicky*) Walker: "This is my van" (*punch kick*).
Just...what? At one point Walker talks to his (apparently ridiculously rich) Grandfather and explains "My whole life I've been chasing *enter bad guy name*. I'm this close to catching him and making him pay". We know this is to do with his cop father because of the 3 times he stared at different pictures of his father with close up misty eyes. We later meet a chief of police who Walker works for and who still feels the need to ask him why "this is personal". As his boss of any length of time at all surely this is standard information he should be aware of. It's like watching the entire film with an audio descriptive track turned on, or if someone forgot to format the scene descriptions and dialogue separately, so the actors just read anything on paper. In many respects it's unforgivable. In another, completely ridiculous respect, it's hilarious and totally appropriate.
And then there's the characters themselves. Walker is an undercover cop. Fine. He's sent into the titular Brick Mansions to defuse a neutron bomb by the Mayor. THE MAYOR. What exactly is Walkers expertise that makes him so adept at diffusing NEUTRON BOMBS? WE never find out. RZA's big bad'un is a dope dealing badass, executing henchmen just because they smiled at the wrong time. Then he has a change of heart, gets wobbly when his leadership is threatened by his merc' team, then teams up with Walker to take on, you guessed it (or did you?) - the Mayor. Not before he recovers a Caribbean accent for the final ten minutes. It's preposterous nonsensical rubbish.
And if you expect some action to take your mind of all the nonsense it never really delivers. Belle is typically brilliant, but I can watch a ten year old BBC1 advert to see him run across rooftops. Walker delivers fight scenes like he knows it'll all get edited to make him look better, and unfortunately the editing catches him sweat-less and smiling far too often, and his scenes with Belle only serve to show up his deficiencies. And when the two female leads face off there's more focus on their limited clothing coverage and slow motion chain whipping than any believable choreography. Even their final moments are underplayed and largely ignored.
Which brings us to the end, where everyone becomes friends (except the Mayor) and drug dealers and cops live happily in a ghetto paradise. You really can't make this stuff up.
Unfortunately someone did.
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Featuring: Paul Walker, RZA, David Belle
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