Morel's original was an acrobatic ballet, and its heroes were a ghetto tough guy (David Belle) who jumped from roof to roof like an non-radioactive Spider-Man, and a sympathetic cop (Cyril Raffaelli) who helped to defuse a plan to destroy the ghetto with thermodynamic gentrification.
The movie was remarkable for the way it defined their characters and their relationship purely through movement and athleticism, and just in case anyone mistook it for a dance picture (which it probably is), the two men also beat the crap out of a million guys.
Alessandrin's sequel offers much less artistry and ambition. Gone is the ballet. What remains is the butt-kicking, a lively but familiar style of martial arts that show our heroes as fit as ever, but maybe not as creative.
Fatigue also appears to have set in with Besson, whose plot is a lazy retread of the original, along with healthy borrowings from various Walter Hill and John Carpenter movies (the title is almost certainly an homage to Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13").
In this sequel, Belle's ghetto is again targeted for annihilation and urban renewal. There is a mass evacuation of the poor, but some defiant ethnic gangs remain - Asian, Arab, Italian, African. There's even a skinhead contingent (complete with Nazi insignia).
There is some stereotyping, but the movie has Besson's trademark lack of seriousness and lusty embrace of absurdity, so it seems silly to take offense.
Still, it doesn't go down easy when "Ultimatum" asks us to embrace, as just one of the boys, a neo-Nazi whose wears his SS insignia tattooed on his head.
