Wanted to see Paul Walker’s last completed film go out with a bang (the next Fast & Furious film was unfinished at the time of his death, his brothers will be standing in to complete his role), but unfortunately Brick Mansions isn’t all that good. It is a remake of French film District 13, and brings over the star of that movie David Belle, one of the founders of the parkour discipline. Because of that, the action scenes involving Belle are pretty spectacular, but the movie as a whole is flat, shallow, and forgettable.
Taking place in the near-future, Walker plays an undercover cop who has made it his goal to take down the big drug lords of Detroit. His biggest target lives in Brick Mansions, an area of Detroit that has been walled off from the its surroundings due to its terrible drug and crime problems. It has now become a city within a city, and people can only enter or leave at military controlled checkpoints. It all sounds like a grand premise, but the movie comes out predictable and stale. The bad guys are super bad until all of a sudden they aren’t anymore, and then they are super good. When Belle teams up with Walker, he even makes a joke how this has become a buddy cop movie, and from then on it pretty much is, with every stereotype you can think of. The “surprise” ending takes too long to come to a climax, you just see it coming like a train that you can’t step away from. The Fast & Furious films are pretty mindless action flicks, but at least they have a tightness to them that is engaging and fun to watch. Unfortunately for Brick Mansions, the only thing grabbing was the memorial to Walker at the start of the credits.
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