by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Springing from the ghettos of Paris—but now fully international—the acrobatic urban activity called parkour is equal parts extreme sport (minus pricey equipment), anti-martial art (no cracks about the French finessing the act of fleeing, please) and transgressive inner-city pastime (physical graffiti, indeed). It’s also best left to kids, as its perpetual forward motion—all jumps, slides and hops, over, under and through any rooftop, wall, window, stairwell and balcony—is undoubtedly murder on the knees.

Parkour has certainly been featured in French films prior to 2004’s Banlieue 13, released here this week as District B13. 2001’s Yamakasi was about parkour and little else, and its public profile triggered splits in the subculture. Oddly enough, among those disgruntled at parkour’s “commercialization” was David Belle, uniformly regarded as the creator of the activity—and now the star of District B13.

The film isn’t exclusively about parkour. In fact, the fast, fluid obstacle-dodging is in frustratingly short supply in what amounts to a head-on collision of Escape From New York, Looney Tunes and La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz’s letter bomb to France’s clueless white majority), minus the withering wit of any of them.

Briefly put, it’s 2010 and the arrondissements of Paris, full of druggies, deadbeats and angry Arabs as they are, have been sealed off inside concrete walls that would give Ariel Sharon wood, were he functional at this point. Leïto (Belle) is the charismatic boss-man of his district’s one clean and crime-free building, putting him at odds with local gangsters—an attempted hit triggers the first burst of parkour, and it’s doubtful anyone does it better than Belle. Soon, however, Leïto’s partnered with an undercover cop (stuntman Cyril Raffaelli) to retrieve a ticking neutron bomb the French government “misplaced” in B13. Hijinx ensue.

It’s a shame to see Belle’s potential squandered in what ultimately amounts to yet another tolerable but inconsequential B-movie from Luc Besson, who’s been working the fast, cheap and forgettable angle ever since the success of Taxi. It would be nice to see Belle and his best traceurs (parkour practitioners) in a slick, big-budget parkour blowout, unimpeded by any artificially attached narrative. Time’s running out, though. Those knees won’t last forever.

>> Movie Listings