Banlieue 13/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Anticlimax Boss: Roland. Damien tells the others to "Leave Him to Me", they square up, Damien cracks his joints... and then takes him out with a single kick to the crotch.
  • Broken Aesop : The ending of the sequel contains one of the most broken aesops ever seen : After having foiled the villain's plan to blow up Banlieue 13 in order to have it replaced by a rich suburb, and exposed his orchestration of the civil violence leading to that decision, the leaders of all five stereotypical ethnic gangs (Black rastafarians who look like rejects from the Lord's Resistance Army, robe-clad bearded arabs, Trigger Happy portuguese used car salesmen, tattoed asian martial artists and white neo-nazi skinheads) give the French President an "inspirational" speech on how they're like a family that protects, unites and brings people together ! Keeping in mind that they all voluntarily racially segregate themselves into different blocks and have only united to fight a common enemy, this reaches previously unexplored levels of Wallbanger territory But wait, it gets worse: they then decide that it would be better to rebuild Banlieue 13 from scratch and proceed to go along with the villain's plan and blow it up anyway !
    • Well, to be fair, early on it was mentioned that if the Big Bad had gotten his way, D13 would've been replaced by middle-upper class housing, displacing all the poor into the other districts. What Leito's posse were probably getting at was replacing it with new low-income housing and better urban planning... assuming 5 walking stereotypes, a kung fu cop, and a free-runner were able to get that point across.
  • Critical Dissonance: Received an awful critical reception in France, but didn't do too badly in the box office.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: "Start chewing."
  • Fridge Logic: At the climax of the movie, it turns out the code is to detonate the bomb. The timer runs out, and nothing happens. Since the Big Bad wants the bomb to go off anyway, why not have the bomb go off when the timer does?
    • A weak reason is given in that it was the only way to make sure it was in position so YMMV.