Twitch

We've been tracking the progress of the Luc Besson-produced Banlieu 13 for a good while around here and for good reason: this thing stars a couple of Frenchmen who just may be able to challenge Ong-Bak's Tony Jaa for the 'next international action star' title ... these guys actually created their own martial art and, while I have no idea how useful it would be in an actual fight, it looks mighty fine on screen.

Well, things just got weird for this film ... the two largest theater complexes in Brussels have refused to screen it over security fears. It's rated for viewers under sixteen and has no political element at all: it's simply an adrenaline kicking action flick. But despite the gentle rating and the fact that the film sold over half a million tickets in France through its opening week it will not be screened in Brussels because "it could provoke spectators to behave violently".

Now I realize that Europeans have always viewed the North American casual attitude towards violence a little askance but this is well beyond anything I could have predicted and the producers of the film have now gone so far as to suggest what's actually happening here is anti-French racism. Check the full story here, and a previous story we ran with a stack of trailer links here.