This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Paul Walker deserves a better posthumous tribute than "Brick Mansions," a whackadoodle action flick from the mind of Luc Besson.
Walker plays Damien Collier, an undercover Detroit cop who's after the nasty drug lord Tremaine (RZA), who lives in the walled-off tenement Brick Mansions. Tremaine's crew has stolen a neutron bomb that's set to go off in 12 hours, and to find it and disarm it, Collier reluctantly teams up with Lino Dupree (David Belle), a street thief who lives in Brick Mansions and has his own beef with Tremaine.
Belle, who starred in "District B13," the French original being remade here, is a master of the building-hopping martial art called parkour, and his acrobatic moves bring a kinetic energy to the movie.
Alas, director Camille Delamarre (who edited the Besson-produced "Taken 2" and "Lockout") cuts too frenetically for a coherent action scene.
Walker is charismatic, as always, and this movie just reminds us why we'll miss him.
HH
'Brick Mansions'
Opens Friday, April 25, at theaters everywhere; rated PG-13 for frenetic gunplay, violence and action throughout, language, sexual menace and drug material; 90 minutes.