District B13 (Banlieue 13), a French film directed by Pierre Morel, features the exploits of two kungfu stars, Leito (played by David Belle) and Damien (played by Cyril Raffaelli). Later, a bunkhouse for training muscular but overweight gangsters has a picture of Bruce Lee on the wall, thereby celebrating the obvious inspiration for the film. When the film begins in the year 2010, Leito is in some sort of trouble with Taha (played by Bibi Naceri), the leader of the gangsters in Paris's District B-13, where the authorities have built a high wall to keep the troublemakers in check; to enter or leave B13, one must go through police checkpoints. Some of Taha's minions seek Leito, who manages to escape, using acrobatic talents now in vogue in France that are known as parkour, that is, moving quickly through the city by running and leaping over fences and buildings. When the minions come up emptyhanded before Taha, the idea emerges (after several are shot dead on the spot) that they should kidnap Leito's sister Lola (played by Dany Verissimo). When they do, Leito predictably comes after them, stealing his way into Taha's well-guarded headquarters, and his ploy is to get his sister released by threatening to kill Taha at gunpoint. Accordingly, Leito gets safe conduct out of the headquarters to the police station, but the police arrest Leito rather than Taha, whose army is better armed, whereupon Taha is allowed to recapture his sister. Next, police officer Damien exhibits his kungfu skill on the screen in order to alert filmviewers to his talents, which perhaps explain why he is selected for a special mission by the Paris police. A nuclear bomb has been hijacked by Taha's B13 crew. If the bomb goes off, an estimated two million Parisians will die. Damien's assignment is to neutralize the bomb. To get into B13, where Taha holds the bomb, Leito is needed, so the police pretend that Damien is a convict also being transferred in the same van, whereupon the latter manages to take control of the van, a scenario that presumably will gain Leito's confidence so that the two can work together, especially when Damien reveals that Lola has been made drug dependent and is now Taha's sex slave. Although Leito intuits that Damien is a cop, he agrees to cooperate anyway in order to save his sister. Leito's street smarts also enable him to see that Damien has been duped, that the bomb will be detonated when Damien types in a code to be supplied by the authorities by cellphone when they reach the bomb. The film, with drumbeats used as a racy filmscore, appears to be saying that the French government has no interest in the plight of the poor or the thousands of unemployed in the midst of the fact acation.
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