Big mistake. District B13 is derivative, gratuitously violent and transparent propaganda that appears to have been produced under government influence in response to the car-burning riots that started in the housing projects of Seine St. Denis last summer.
In early 1930s America, with the misery of the great depression in full flower, Hollywood was gaga over the talkies and directors like Howard Hawkes were making movies full of crackling dialog and blazing guns, many of which glorified criminal violence as a way of getting ahead in a world that left no other avenue open to success. (Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson and the original Scarface are examples of this genre.) The authorities under the Hoover administration were horrified, resulting in the establishment of the Hayes Commission's Motion Picture Production Code that specifically prohibited such movies. In accordance with Hayes guidelines, leading-man actors like James Cagney, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson started showing up as wise-cracking FBI agents instead of dangerously attractive gangsters. District B13 is the nauseating equivalent for the current French context.
A single misleading film review is no big thing, but after Judith Miller's spectacular stenography about WMD and Tom Friedman's authoritative support for the war party (not to mention Times Select), I rely less and less on the Gray Lady and such ignorant mistakes only confirm my disaffection. Here is a better capsule review by the New York Post's Lumenick:
Idiotic French mashup of Escape from New York and Assault on Precinct 13 starring a couple of veteran stuntment qualifies as something of a guilty pleasure, though its every bit as dumb as its American counterparts.That's more like it.
Update: Woops. District B13 was made in 2004. Well, so much for that theory.
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