Brick Mansions (2014)

Brilliant and touching

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

In 2018, downtown Detroit becomes a walled in city...by a four foot wall. The Mayor wants to move the people out and build a place for rich people. Meanwhile Lino (David Belle) in a subplot is thwarting drug dealers as a vigilante. Detective Collier (Paul Walker) is also fighting against the bad guys downtown, while other cops are on the take.Lino's ex-gf (Catalina Denis) gets kidnapped by the bad guys who also jack a vehicle with a suitcase neutron bomb now on a countdown. Collier has to go get the bomb that just happened to be strolling around the walled in city in a vehicle, something he is not smart enough to question until someone points it out to him how odd is the state of events.The plot was all over the place and uneven. It appears Walker's dad was killed and he was looking for the culprit, but not that hard. David Belle had the best fight moves highlighted early on...i.e urban acrobatics. There was also a grindhouse cat fight. It is hard to imagine this botched screenplay was done by the same guy who did quality work like "Fifth Element" and "Transporter."And you can't help but notice that in this film Paul Walker crashes his vehicle at 80-90+ mph and survives because he wore a seat belt.Action with no substance. Appears to be overrated by Paul Walker fans moved by his untimely death.Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

It is bad copy of Banlieue 13 , bad acting from Paul Walker.there is no feeling at all.No compression between acting of Cyril Raffaelli and Walker.Also David Belle in this movie was not like his grate role Banlieue 13unfortunate it is disappointed.

Detroit detective Damien Collier (Paul Walker) is sent in to infiltrate a notorious gang led by Tremaine Alexander (RZA). Alexander's gang have stolen a nuclear warhead and intend to use it against those that are living 'outside' of Brick Mansions. Collier is assisted in this mission by ex-convict Lino (David Belle). However, their mission becomes more difficult when Lino's ex-girlfriend Lola (Catalina Denis) ends up being kidnapped by the gang. The two men (who initially don't get along) find that they have to work together to not only rescue Lola, but also to rescue an entire city as well.The problems begin with this film pretty much from the start and the first issue is unoriginality; the start of the film felt like a rip-off of Robocop - the fact that the setting of this film is Detroit (the same setting as Robocop) makes matters worse - it's one thing stealing an idea, but then to have the audacity to use the same city as the setting??. Hmmmm..... very dodgy. It then has a 'haves' vs 'have nots' theme between those in Brick Mansions and those that are 'outside' Brick Mansions. Suffice it to say that this one sentence sums up this concept as it is given no real focus or development. It perhaps would have been slightly better if this aspect had been developed more and probably would have made the film slightly more interesting and much less derivative.The laziness in the storytelling continues as we see Collier saddled with an ex-con as a partner whom he doesn't get along with which is something that we saw 30 years ago in 48 Hours. The scene where Collier fights a load of heavies whilst he's got a steering wheel handcuffed to his hand is something that was done by Jackie Chan in one of the Rush Hour films (I think it was the first one). Now I'll be honest I don't mind unoriginality per se, but if your material is unoriginal then at least try to make sure that your characters have some chemistry, make the action sequences either exciting or tongue in cheek. All these things are lacking here and what you get here for the most part are one-dimensional characters and a dull and lifeless script. This could have worked as a very basic 'buddy-buddy' film, but as mentioned the chemistry is so weak between Belle and Walker that even this basic need isn't fulfilled. The story is also weak, clichéd and not particularly interesting and the lame twist at the end is unlikely to fool anyone. This is a shame because storytelling used to be one of Besson's strengths so I'm at a loss as to what has gone wrong here.The closing credits inform us that this is a French-Canadian production and it's easy to see France's input in this film; parkour (which is a French invention) seems to be promoted heavily in this film, but then again I believe the original version of this film was set in France so perhaps the French are just trying to promote parkour more in the US. Even the action sequences (which could have been the film's strength) fail to excite or do anything we haven't seen before. This film is directed by Camille Delamarre, but he offers the same frantic directional style coupled with slow-motion framing styles that we've seen from Besson in some of his previous directional efforts. It made me wonder if Delamarre had taken some advice from Besson on how to frame the shots. The direction here isn't horrendous, but it's a little too familiar and is starting to look a bit old hat now. Luc Besson has been responsible for many films that I have enjoyed (he wrote the screenplay for Leon and Taken which are two of my favourite films), but he seems to have lost his way lately by churning out this derivative fluff and recently he also released a film called Lucy which was another rather mediocre offering. Even action fans looking for the most basic requirements in a film are going to be disappointed by this rather weak offering from Besson.

If you make a movie about cops, bad guys and a heavy weapon. Make it fun and extreme or else its gonna be one boring cliché thing. Too bad this movie is full of clichés and not logical scenes. Beside of this,there is bad acting, bad fight scenes and a bad script. At the end every bad thing gets worse and worse. Just at the moment you think it could not get any worse. The big bad guy turns in to the next Ghandi out of a sudden. And the crew at the end with him. And why not trying to be the next mayor, just a couple of days after you shoot someone. This movie is one big mess. I think it has to be done quickly. It is a big waste of time and could watch a better movie.