A remake of the French hit District 13, and owing more than a passing nod to Escape From New York, Brick Mansions finds hero cop Damien (Paul Walker) sent into the walled-off, crime-ridden cesspool that is Detroit, in order to take down big bad guy Tremaine (RZA), who happens to have stolen a massive nuclear device from the local government. Once inside the city, Damien teams up with ex-con Lino (David Belle), who is trying to save his ex-girlfriend, who has also been taken by Tremaine.
As the final film completed by Paul Walker before his untimely death, it is a testament to his natural, easy going charisma that he manages to not be dragged down by the jaw-droppingly bad movie around him, because make no mistake, Brick Mansions is TERRIBLE.
Everyone except Walker seems physically or mentally incapable of “acting”, more often than not gurning straight at the camera. The plot makes absolutely zero sense – how did a local mayor get his hands on a Russian nuclear device? – and the script is an intelligence free zone.
The original District 13 was all-parkour-all-the-time, but Walker is clearly not the parkour expert that Belle is, so they’ve dumped in one car-chase after another, and sometimes both together (Carkour?), just to distract us from the fact that running and jumping over things can go only get you so far against thousands of bad guys all armed to the teeth with automatic weapons.
The fight scenes are completely nonsensical, all blurry close-ups until we see someone is flat on his back, so we know the other guy won the fight but we don’t know how. Don’t even get us started on the female characters, who at one point fight each other in fetish-wear while using whips and chains as weapons.
And yet, there is something redeemable here. Brick Mansions, despite itself, becomes laughably enjoyable, accidentally entertaining, and finally succumbs to the description of “So bad it’s good”. It’s something that Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme would’ve made in the mid-90s, and we’re only accepting them for their cheesy greatness now. Let’s check back in with Brick Mansions in 2040 and see if we can accept it then.
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