The year is 2018. Detroit is falling apart at the seams, corrupt politicians dividing the population by socioeconomic lines and praying it all works itself out (some things never change). The city's housing projects have been walled off into “Brick Mansions,” a post-apocalyptic war zone presided over by drug kingpin Tremaine (RZA).
In a town where the good guys are bad guys and the bad guys are really, really bad guys, two men remain steadfast in their willingness to take down Tremaine: Damien (Walker), an undercover cop out for revenge after Tremaine murdered his father, and Lino (Belle), Brick Mansions' local caped crusader who fights crime by terrorizing cocaine shipments. After Tremaine's bribed law enforcers capture Lino, he teams up with Damien to infiltrate Brick Mansions, take down Tremaine, and defuse a neutron bomb that happens to be armed and counting down.
Brick Mansions is unnecessarily dopey. Ridiculousness is acceptable — parkour jumping is rarely an effective maneuver for fighting bad guys, but it looks awesome on screen — but Besson and Delamarre pass a point of no return when they slip in lines from Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M." into RZA's dialogue. Get it??
The lowest common denominator approach spreads through the movie's veins like poison; Walker's Damien is a personality-less, gun-toting boy scout who busts drug dealers, engages in hokey heart-to-hearts with his grandpa, and falls face first into the nonsensical action orchestrated by Delamarre. Lino is equally vanilla, given a thinly-sketched, damsel-in-distress girlfriend (played by Catalina Denis, who spends most of the movie in chains) in order to mask the fact his only motivation is being a nice guy. At least he can do parkour.
Like a kid striking out in tee ball, Brick Mansions sets up intriguing dystopian ideas and action movie functionality, only to whiff at every turn. Besson and Delamarre's vision of the Brick Mansions neighborhood is myopic and borderline offensive, a collage of ghetto stereotypes reinforced by Tremaine's broad-stroke cronies. It's big black guys with semi-automatic weapons fought by and eventually turned right by two white heroes.In a movie that dreams of commenting on gentrification and the marginalizing of minorities in America, the French duo behind-the-scenes bury themselves in archaic garbage that offers zero threat, zero stakes, and scarce thrills. A commanding actor in the villain role could have pulled off the ruthless behavior and moral complexities of Tremaine. RZA is not that guy. Mumbling his way through repurposed Gary Oldman lines from Besson's The Professional, the rapper-turned-actor is delivering a school play performance compared to Walker. Overlooked is the radiant Ayisha Issa as Tremaine's dominatrix number two, whose ferocity and camp factor should have bumped her up to number one. But a villainess is too unconventional for Brick Mansions.
All would be forgiven if Delamarre could shoot a frame of action worth a Sunday afternoon glued to TNT. His style is erratic, any given shot lasting approximately 30 milliseconds, a grab bag of angles intercut to limp effect. Subliminal exhilaration does not serve parkour, real stunts that are all about dispelling our brains cynicism with the full-motion movement. Belle is a pro — and he's a decent actor too, with way more of a visceral presence than any of Walker's Fast & Furious co-stars — and his stunt work is reduced to confetti in Delamarre's hands. The movie's best scene plays off the fact that Walker can't hold a candle to Belle's bouncy behavior, so he opts for brute force. That's a dynamic the filmmakers only tease.
For a movie built around a dog-eat-dog enclave and a lawless acrobatic sport, Brick Mansions is relentlessly boring, exasperated by Besson and Delamarre derivative approach. Walker is an actor of physical range in a vehicle comfortable with handing him more of the same: driving cars, running around streets, and death staring his opponents. As if to own its copycat nature, Besson's script riffs on a line made Internet famous by Fast & Furious: “We ride or we die!” RZA screams.
Brick Mansions is no Fast & Furious, it's no District: B13, and it's no anything, really. The Great American Parkour Epic remains unproduced, with Delamarre's stale feature debut taking the elevator when it needs to run, swing, and backflip its way to the top.
