Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Brick Mansions Blu-ray Movie Review

A frustrating epitaph for Paul Walker.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 9, 2014

One of the all time great headlines of 20th century news came in 1975 when the New York Daily News posted the hilarious summary Ford to City: Drop Dead. President Ford had refused to provide a federally funded bailout for the desperate city, and only a miracle ended up preventing bankruptcy. New York City residents may have felt Hollywood, if not the rest of the United States, was saying something similar six years later when John Carpenter’s Escape from New York posited the Big Apple as a sealed off repository for the dregs of humanity, certainly a blow to the already frayed sense of civic pride many Manhattanites probably were feeling. Well, Rudolph Guiliani’s well publicized (and frankly fairly successful) attempts to clean up notoriously crime ridden sections of New York may have contributed to this questionable mantle having been passed to Detroit for Brick Mansions. Detroit is of course a once proud metropolis which itself has fallen upon hardscrabble times, including actual bankruptcy. Adding insult to injury, Brick Mansions offers a near future Detroit which has been bifurcated, with a walled off ghetto called Brick Mansions where, yes, the dregs of humanity reside in a crime ridden environment that is rife with illicit drug activity. Undercover cop Damien Collier (Paul Walker in his last completed film role before his untimely death) works both sides of the tracks (and/or giant containment wall, as the case may be), helping to corral drug kingpins and other bad guys. Meanwhile, a permanent resident of Brick Mansions, ex-con Lino (David Belle) is engaged in his own one man vigilante crusade against the drug trade, stealing several kilos of heroin and dumping them down his bathtub drain, thereby enraging local drug running middleman Tremaine (RZA). All of this frenetic plot unspooling turns out to be largely for naught, providing little more than an opportunity for some similarly manic set pieces involving lots of parkour, hand to hand combat and, just for good measure, blistering gunfire. What Brick Mansions ultimately ends up centering on is Tremaine’s theft of a nuclear bomb (“we prefer to call it a ‘device’”, as one hapless politician intones) which, in typically brainless action film style, was of course being transported through the heart of Brick Mansions when it was purloined. Can Damien infiltrate this underworld and save the day, perhaps with a little inside help from Lino?

If some of the preceding précis sounds familiar, it may be because you’ve already seen it in Luc Besson’s 2004 action thriller District B13. And indeed Brick Mansions bears Besson’s imprimatur, although this time as producer rather than director, and the writing credits make it clear that Brick Mansions is indeed something of a remake. Besson protégé Camille Delamare helms this outing, but it’s clear he means to follow largely in his mentor’s footsteps, resulting in a number of high octane set pieces but not much dramatic weight or even logic at times.

While some elements from the original film have been understandably adapted for American audiences (including the Detroit setting, of course), one of the smartest decisions the filmmakers made was to hold over David Belle in the key role of Lino, the parkour enthusiast, whose efforts to bring down the drug trade within Brick Mansions dovetails with Damien’s later attempts to wrestle control of the nuclear bomb. Though audiences have become fairly accustomed to parkour sequences courtesy of such high profile films as Casino Royale and The Bourne Legacy, not to mention District B 13 itself, a film which is often credited with helping to spark the parkour craze, or at least elevate it to mainstream public consciousness, the staging of several parkour sequences here is quite remarkable and arguably the best thing about the film. When Belle is on screen and moving through some incredibly complex displays of gymnastics, Brick Mansions almost seethes with a feral energy that is hard to deny. Unfortunately, when the film tries to deal with narrative issues, the runner stumbles, so to speak, and dramatically this film falls pretty flat.

Fans of Paul Walker will no doubt flock to see this film for the chance to see the star one last time, but sadly even Walker’s innate charisma can’t do much with the role of Damien. The star also seems oddly physically maladroit, at least when paired with Belle, who has an almost feline grace in simple movements, let alone some of the truly amazing parkour stunts on display. The film becomes so hackneyed after a while, saddling Damien with a melodramatic backstory that of course plays into the whole saga of Brick Mansions and attempts at urban redevelopment. Tentative romantic interests also enter the fray, when Lino’s girlfriend becomes (of course) a damsel in distress, taken hostage by the bad guys. It’s all so resolutely formulaic that even high flying parkour sequences can’t ultimately lift this film out of its doldrums.

Brick Mansions Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Brick Mansions is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. Shot digitally utilizing the Red Epic, Brick Mansions boasts a sharp and stable image that offers excellent clarity even in some of the manic action sequences when both characters within the frame as well as the frame itself are highly mobile due to filming techniques. The palette here is often pretty tamped down, exploiting dirty, drab beiges and browns to evoke the urban decay within Brick Mansions. As seems to be a requirement these days, several scenes have been fairly aggressively color graded, once again to the ever popular slate gray-cool blue side of things, though there's really not any appreciable lack of detail in these moments. Some exterior shots offer substantial depth of field.

Brick Mansions Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Brick Mansions' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is a riot of sound effects and well placed surround activity, offering a very consistently immersive listening experience. Action sequences are bolstered by great foley effects and some punchy LFE. Dialogue is presented cleanly and the entire mix is very well prioritized, offering an at times manic and noisy but always enjoyable experience.

Brick Mansions Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• On Set Action with Paul Walker (1080p; 2:13) includes a brief interview with Walker as well as a look at some of the fight choreography being rehearsed.


• Becoming Tremaine (1080p; 4:10) profiles RZA.


• Brick by Brick (1080p; 6:06) focuses on the main characters in the film.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:19)


• Theatrical (1080p; 1:30:17) and Extended (1080p; 1:40:01) Versions

Brick Mansions Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When Brick Mansions is running on all cylinders (and/or appendages in the parkour sequences), it's a fun if lame brained action film that perfectly satisfies requirements for popcorn munching thoughtless entertainment. The problem here is that there's an actual attempt at some narrative elements, and those are often laughable and even amateurish at times (the less said about RZA's "acting", the better). Delamare stages things extremely well, and the film is certainly never boring, even if it strains credulity past the breaking point. The sad part of all of this is this was one of Walker's last features, and fans probably will be hoping that the star went out on top. Even Walker can't really salvage a pedestrian screenplay, and even more peculiarly, his physicality seems to pale in comparison to Belle's. Nevertheless, fans of Walker are probably the prime prospect for this feature, and for them the good news for them is that technical merits here are very strong indeed.