- He's jumping from the top of one crane
almost straight down, boom,
onto this other crane.
And all he does is compact
and absorb his momentum
and continue moving.
It's so impractical that his shin bones
aren't just sticking out
of his knees or something,
because the amount of impact
that that would have taken
on a straight drop is just crazy to me.
[static noise]
Hey, GQ, my name's Jesse La Flair.
I'm a professional parkour athlete
and you're watching The Breakdown.
[chill music]
First clip up, classic, Casino Royale.
[static noise]
This has introduced millions
of people to sort of
the level of movement
that parkour athletes do.
And the athlete in this one is a legend.
Let's check it out.
[engine revving]
[crash]
[debris falling]
[grunting]
All right, I'm gonna pause it right there.
So what's beautiful
about this interim scene
is that I know that a lot
of the background stuff
is actually happening in real time.
So, like, him running as the
truck slammed into that dirt
is real.
He strides up, and once he
gets onto that red beam,
if you rewind it back a little bit here,
this is a climbing technique.
He is putting pressure into his feet.
He's using his hands,
and he's climbing up.
A lot of this sequence is done at height.
So I know that they had
safety lines on the actor.
But it isn't like he's being supported.
It's actually just in case he falls off.
So he has to deal with the real sequence.
[dramatic music]
I think what's really cool
about this crane shot is,
one, those three strips you're
seeing is actually grip tape.
So coming from someone who's
done this particular stunt,
it helps you from not
slipping and falling off.
So production had to put grip
tape all along that thing.
[yelling]
I'm gonna pause it right there.
He's on a safety wire for sure,
especially this particular
shot where you can see
that the actor is actually face-in.
Whether they cheated this down
below or not, I'm not sure.
But the actors, and stunt person,
they're gonna be on wires once
you get to a certain height.
[dramatic music]
I'm gonna scrub through this real quick.
It's a really legit looking jump.
The problem is when he gets
the height of that crane,
cause you've been at
this incline for so long.
You're really out of steam.
So he had to step off the edge of it
and really launch arms first.
Which, to be honest with you,
at that height, there's no
real way to save yourself.
One of the scariest things to
do while you're doing parkour
is to jump to something
with an under hang,
which this has,
because if your fingers peel off
the only thing he's
reaching for is his hands.
His legs can't really do much.
If his fingers peel there's
no way to save this.
So usually when we jump to something
we tend to try to lead with our feet
to cushion that momentum,
but this particular jump
he really just didn't have an option.
So, he risked his life for this one.
[dramatic music]
Before we go to this jump,
I should probably break
down who the actor is
in this sequence.
Sébastien Foucan is iconic in the sport.
He's actually one of
the first practitioners,
traceurs if you want to call it that,
to start parkour with his friend
and teammate David Belle.
What's funny is that they
kind of had a falling out
about what the core values
of the parkour space is.
So Sébastien kind of went on to create
and start free running.
Right now, parkour is the most
fast and efficient movement
going over, under, or
through any obstacle that's
in your path.
And free running is more about
the self expression, right?
It's the flips and tricks,
the way that you creatively
interact with any environment
around you to sort of express yourself.
[dramatic music]
[grunting]
This is one of my favorite jumps
because it's very practical, very real,
he's running on this beam
that's only 12 inches wide.
He is at height, maybe not as
high as they're depicting it,
but they're up there right now.
He is on a safety wire.
[dramatic music]
Pausing it.
So, what's really sketchy
about this particular jump
that they used,
and I'm sure that he
did this more than once,
if you look at this point,
his feet go through the structure.
His hands are holding onto the top.
We call this a running stride to cat hang.
Thankfully his hands did grab
what they needed to grab.
Good job for the safety wire.
[dramatic music]
Okay, that definitely deserves a pause.
This is ideal. This is how
you would do this movement.
You'd run, you'd step off,
you would drive your arms
up into the air.
This is one of those
things that we often do
to allow our power and our strength
to help us travel up and over.
What we don't ever do is
these next couple frames.
This weird back arch
with both legs behind us.
Maybe it's a long jumping
technique, I'm not really sure.
But it's nothing that I would ever do.
Especially while going to an
obstacle that is in front of me
and with a huge drop under me.
Because I need my feet to
help absorb that momentum.
I have to guess that no
matter what happened next,
this performer, stunt
double, whoever it is,
his feet ended up slipping
and the safety wire had to catch him
or he hit his butt or
grabbed onto that wire
and probably hurt his hand so much.
What we would've done
is called a precision
where you actually land precisely
on the edge of something.
The reason why we do that
is because it actually
allows us to control our body
and save us in many different ways.
If I had a little bit too much power
I can absorb that momentum through my legs
by landing on the edge
and the balls of my feet
which is right in the
front part of your foot.
Let's skip ahead to one
of the most iconic parts
of the scene up on the cranes.
[dramatic music]
All right, I'm going to
pause it right there.
I love this fall so much.
Sébastien just being
this very veteran
practitioner of movement,
to be able to do this fall naturally
and make it feel aggressive.
Get that turn out where he's like wow
looking down at the ground.
I think it's incredible, right.
When you get into that 20, 30 feet up.
You feel that adrenaline,
your body is telling you to like
do everything to save yourself.
So if I asked you to go walk on a curb
or run on a curb, you
could do it comfortably
because you know if you
step off you're okay.
But if I put that same width
of a curb up 20, 30 feet.
All of a sudden your body
goes into like safety mode
and your brain is telling
you do everything you can
to like not get hurt.
That is where parkour training
actually comes into play.
A lot of people can jump to something
and kinda land safe.
But it's when something goes wrong
that we see our top pros save themselves
in this like really
beautiful efficient way.
[dramatic music]
Okay, this crane to crane shot
looks like it's like a 30 foot drop.
He's jumping from the top of
one crane almost straight down,
boom, onto this other crane
and all he does is compact
and absorb his momentum
and continue moving.
It's so impractical that his shin bones
aren't just sticking out
of his knees or something
because the amount of impact
that that would've taken
on a straight drop is just crazy to me.
The reason why this is more practical
is because, one, the sand
is going to help dissipate
like so much of the energy
that would've been into the ground.
This is going to save his
heels, his knees, his ankles.
One thing that we do see
him to almost immediately
is go into a roll.
Probably one of the most
important elements in parkour
is understanding how to
dissipate your momentum.
By rolling, we're taking energy
that normally would've
been like straight down
and then like this, where
all this impacts happening,
and we're actually going
down and across the ground
which is actually helping
all of that momentum
that would've went through out body
and dissipating it across the ground
which is going to make life way easier.
[dramatic music] [bang]
Oh my god. Sorry, I had to pause that.
That fall is pretty gnarly.
It feels like this would
definitely fracture a rib.
Especially if it was practically done
from the height in which
they're depicting it from.
That impact to your chest,
would have been like boom.
[dramatic music]
I love the way Daniel Craig
perfect roll, then overshoots the edge
down onto some structure that just happens
to be kind of soft enough to cave in
then bump him onto the ground.
A for effort for sure.
So, overall, Casino Royale
chase is easily one of the best
chases ever made for TV or movie.
It's referenced every
time I show up on set
and they ask me to do something.
Like two thumbs up, 100%, Sébastien Foucan
did an incredible job
which really did help
grow the sport of parkour
and free running world wide.
[static noise]
Next clip we're going to watch is Ong-Bak.
I've never seen this film.
I'm excited just in these first few frames
of the comedic vibe that
I'm feeling out of it.
[sounds of men running and yelling]
I feel like what's ridiculous about it
is the structures that
they're going through
seem to very like
weirdly like who carried
something like that.
Very rarely do we just like,
all right I'm gonna go
on like a one mile run
and jump on things I've
never tested or never saw
that's in my path.
But in a lot of these chase scene's
we're trying to depict that, right?
So, one thing we try be aware of
is trying to make it feel real.
And the more realistic
that you make that feel
it makes it feel a little less comedic.
In a practical sense,
if I was running away
from something or someone,
and I had never been in
that environment before.
You have to deal with the
elements that are in front of you
and that's where like,
yes, you're training
and your ability to adapt is
really going to come into play
and allow you to get past it
and continue to get away
from whatever is it that's chasing you.
[dramatic jumping sounds]
[fast paced music]
He doesn't want to knock these kids down
and so he jumps over them
in this like really insane looking
like piked position.
So a pike is anytime
your hands and your body
comes down to your legs
when they're straight.
It pretty much looks like he could've just
like scooted through them real quick,
like, whoa, and kept running.
But I guess this works too.
Oh, yeah they got through them.
I need to stop it at this
running and jumping off of somebody.
For someone to unexpectedly
get stepped on,
their entire body, especially
in a little plastic chair,
would probably go flying forward
and just smash into that table.
But for whatever reason this
guy is super strong and sturdy
and allows him to like
boost off of his shoulder
to get a little bit of height
to clear the rest of the gang here.
[static noise]
[upbeat music]
Okay, this is ridiculous.
It's like, just like sometimes
in the middle of the street
we have a set of spikes and weapons
for no particular reason.
What are those gardening tools?
I don't know what's going on.
But, good thing our man
here is flexible enough
to hit a solid split.
Little V kick.
Break dancing in the air.
Straight over all of the obstacles.
I mean, I guess it's parkour
'cause it's fast and efficient?
I personally have never done a full split
in the air to get over
a set of metal spikes.
But like I said, it works.
I love that they have
this like expectation
like the guy that's like super talented
and then like reality
people trying to do it
and it just doesn't work.
[ripping sound]
Wait, I gotta back up real quick
just to see this like jump approach.
This guy is like hitting
some sort of trampoline
or something because the way
he's setting into the ground
he's leaping up a little bit
and then putting his momentum downward.
Which obviously shows me
that he's trying to create
some sort of reaction on whatever surface
that he's leaving off of.
Whether or not it's a little
mini tramp or something,
clearly he needed a little bit of help
getting this height.
And luckily he just rips his pants
and nothing else happened in this scene.
Could've been worse.
Flexibility is one of
those things where like
there are certain athletes in our sport
that are like way more flexible
because they train it,
they work on it every day.
I, myself, am flexible in a lot of ways,
but it's almost like this
active flexibility, right?
So, if you wanted to see me
do a full split right now
I can't do it.
But when I'm in the air,
the way that I can pike down
or cork and swing my leg
and re-catch myself in
these interesting positions
while in movement,
I feel like I'm almost
more flexible because
of the sort of kinetics
of it all happening
and allowing my body to
sort of react and twist.
Active flexibility is important.
[static noise]
[upbeat music]
All right, this is both
amazing and ridiculous.
This is very much like a
Cirque Du Soleil, circus ring,
arts maneuver.
You don't see it happen
very much in parkour,
but it's incredible and it's really cool
that he was able to do this.
I'm sure that's not real barbed wire.
Even if it was, he barely touches it.
So, that's kinda cool.
If this was me approaching this obstacle.
I definitely wouldn't
have piked through it.
Odds are I literally just
would've ducked under it.
Or if, you know,
I had to go through it
for some other reason,
I would've did a dive roll.
So, literally just diving through it,
rolling on the ground and
allowing myself to pop back up
and continue my momentum forward.
[static noise]
[upbeat music]
[man yelling]
All right, hold on I just
want to see something.
The first guy does this vault and clears
like a vat of boiling oil.
And then the second guy, if
you actually slow it down,
I'm pretty sure his head
would've just dipped deep
into that oil and fried his entire brain
before doing this roll.
But, eh, let's just keep watching.
[static noise]
[action music]
I mean, it's sick.
That's a really beautiful aerial
which is like a cartwheel with no hands
through a very narrow space.
I would've just ran through it,
but okay.
All right, let's fast forward a bit.
[upbeat music]
Yeah!
So, that was sick.
What's cool about this
is you can use a tire
as a trampoline.
I've actually trained with
a bunch of parkour athletes
in Mexico that have
build their entire course
out of like crates and tires.
I've done many a front flip
off of the edge of a tire,
but for him to launch that
double front flip over these guys
that's sick.
Again, practical? I don't know.
But, it works and it was very efficient.
[static noise]
[action music]
So there's many ways to get over a fence.
There's actually one of our
vaults is called a gate vault
where you kind of pop up onto it
with your hips and then you flip over it
and it's a super
controlled, fast maneuver.
He chooses to actually
do what we call a tic tac
in this scene.
Watch him step off of the wall,
oh that's super interesting.
You know I was just going
to pause this to slow down
what he's doing, I know it's a tic tac,
but what's really
interesting, I'm noticing,
he came in with his left foot.
If this was me, I would've came in
at sort of a steeper angle and stepped off
with my right foot
which would've popped
me right onto the fence.
But I can see, as we scrubbed forward,
that what he was trying
to do was get high enough
to put his right foot on top of the fence
so that he can control it and vault over.
The little additional 360, okay.
Maybe he's just dissipating
the extra momentum he had
from twisting off of the wall.
And it gave him a good view of the people
that were chasing him.
So, could work, little
flashy, but I like it.
[static noise]
[dramatic music]
So, as a performer, I always question like
are there wires involved.
If I look at this, I don't think so.
I think they just practiced this.
I think they all actually did it.
As I scrubbed through, do you
feel the weight of every step?
Do you watch these guys just
kind of taking this foot
cause they don't know if it's
going to hit them in the face
or where it's going to hit them.
He's giving them full weight,
so I think this is a practical gag.
They probably had to do
multiple times to get it right.
One of the cool things about parkour
is that it has sourced all
of these different elements
from different sports and lifestyles.
Things like break dancing,
gymnastics, martial arts.
It really, at it's core, is movement.
I am constantly looking at
different actions sports
and things that I can pull from to create
something that is rooted a bit differently
in the sport itself.
As time goes one, it's almost
like free running and parkour
continues to evolve into it's own thing
and that's something I
find super interesting.
[static noise]
So, for a scene that is
like definitely funny
the movement in it is like super legit.
[men yelling]
It might feel a little ridiculous,
but what's happening is
like serious control.
I'd be very curious to
see this entire film.
I think I have to watch this after this.
Especially cause we're quarantined.
I got nothing better to do.
Next up, I know this clip pretty well.
Season seven, episode one, Hawaii Five-0.
I had a little guest star role
and unofficially the
longest parkour chase scene
in television history.
[dramatic music]
[glass shattering]
So, the way that I got
involved with this scene
is that they knew they
wanted to do a parkour chase.
They knew that they wanted to use
a professional parkour athlete.
Just based on I guess my creepy look
and I guess my ability to act.
They decided to pick me,
so, I got the dream job
of choreographing the best chase scene
I could possibly come
up with in the streets
and buildings of Hawaii in Honolulu.
[glass shattering]
All right, so first off,
that was my first time
ever going through glass.
It's real glass, it's tempered glass.
What they do if you look
at the very bottom corners
of the door there's actually
a little pyrotechnic
that pops it right as I'm about to hit it.
Scary part is if they don't pop it in time
I'm probably not going through it
and I'm gonna boom slam my
face and arm and shoulder
and fall back and then glass
would just kind of rain on me
cause they popped it late.
So, in parkour, we
practice everything, right?
In stunts, a lot of times,
especially for television,
you don't rehearse it.
You talk about it with
your stunt coordinator.
You work it out and you do it.
And if there's something that
you don't think you can do.
It's you're responsibility
to step up and say it.
It really does rely on you to
just be honest with yourself
and be practical with your own life
and your own safety.
[static noise]
[dramatic music]
I'm gonna pause it real quick.
So, that's actually called a descent.
It's something that is
happening more and more
in the sport.
People are getting more comfortable
with going down the outside of buildings
and controlling their
momentum as they drop down
from one platform to another.
I don't recommend that anyone ever does it
because this is probably one
of the most dangerous maneuvers
in the parkour space.
I myself am on a wire.
They have to do that,
for insurance reasons.
I tried to get them to give
me as much slack as possible
to make it feel the most realistic.
So you could feel that impact
and it doesn't feel floaty at all
and you can tell that that's real
by one of the times where my feet slips
and my body comes kind of
slamming into the ledge.
So throughout this whole sequence,
there's a lot of moments
where we only did it once
because it was either too dangerous,
the set up was too wild.
There are other sequences in
which we did it many times.
You know, running up cranes nine times.
The descent sequence, I
definitely did multiple times
because they want to film
it in different ways.
So, the actor definitely
has a stunt double.
One of the craziest things
for you to keep in mind
throughout this sequence
is that for many of the shots
his stunt double, his
name is Justin Sundquist,
he had to wear this
mask of the actors face.
For everything that I'm doing,
he's also doing most of it,
but also in the restriction
of this like weird prosthetic mask.
One of the little elements we battle
every time we show up on set
to do one of these scenes
is what are we wearing.
A lot of the times it's like,
oh you're a business man.
So, they want you to be in
these like business shoes
with heels on them and
like jumping to a rail
with a leather soled shoe
becomes a lot more slippery.
In a lot of ways, being in
these sequences for television
really tests our ability to adapt
which is a very parkour concept.
[static noise]
[dramatic music]
All right, we gotta pause it to shout out
the super commonly used
POV angle for parkour
is actually a Go Pro mouth mount.
We hold it, some people
actually just bite the Go Pro,
literally, stick the
Go Pro in their mouth.
There's companies that make
like little scuba diving
mouth guard pieces that you put on
and put it upside down
so it's on your chin.
And the reason we do that
is 'cause it's the most
sort of realistic practical
angle that you can get
in this POV style.
[static noise]
[tire screech]
[car horn]
You don't really get
to see it in the shot,
but this taxi comes sliding
in as I turn the corner.
I'm actually getting up on the hood.
I have to step down onto the curb blind
and then lift myself up right
as he's hitting his brakes
to help not get hit by a car
and continue this chase.
The best part about working
in film and television
is it's this giant collaborative process.
Everyone has the same responsibility
to make this one thing
happen in the right way.
In particular for that scene,
we had drivers that had to come in
and go either a certain speed
or stop at a certain point
or turn their car to block me.
On top of that, me and Justin,
who are running through the streets,
have to have a certain cadence
and a camera guy that's in a camera car
riding past all these other cars
going the opposite
direction down the street
to get the shot.
That it just really does
take a lot of coordination
and understanding of the
everyone's action on the day.
I don't remember exactly
how it was written on paper,
but I believe the way it was
written is one line singular
kind of paint the picture
of where it's happening
but not exactly what's happening.
Certain shots like the you know,
I think they wanted to do the car stuff.
I know they wanted to do a crane shot.
Obviously it is direct reference
from the Casino Royale clip we've seen.
So, some of those elements
are painted in there
and then it's just
figuring out how to do it.
[static noise]
[running sound effects]
[breaking glass]
Probably one of the most
technical and scariest stunts
I've had to do in my career.
So, this was one of those shots
where the director and
stunt coordinator were like
we want to do the Bourne Ultimatum shot
and if you're not familiar with that
there's this moment
where he jumps of a roof
into a window of an apartment.
This particular shot, it
worked out incredibly,
but it was also terrifying
'cause there was no way to practice it.
I'm going through sugar glass,
which can still cut you wide open
and ended up slicing my wrists,
but you have to remember oh
I need to break the window
with my elbow so that my face is protected
and I'm not cutting my face open.
So, there's that moment right before I hit
where you go, okay that's
working, get that elbow up.
Boom.
[glass shatters]
But that's what parkour is.
Knowing your current limit
and trying to push past it
just every so slightly, right?
It's about progression
and that's actually how you get further
than the guys that try to skip the steps
and go too far too soon.
The director for the
sequence, Bryan Spicer,
he was like your character
is like Terminator,
you don't get tired.
And I was like, okay that's interesting.
So, throughout this sequence
you never see me like
breathing heavy or having like this
kinda realistic tiredness to me.
Was I, Jesse La Flair,
tired after all this?
Honestly, I don't even
know how I was so good.
After we wrapped I'd go home.
I'd roll out my muscles.
I'd drink all these recovery shakes.
But besides that, no for some
reason I was pretty good.
Even when I got home after
shooting, I was like surprised
about how happy and healthy
I was with my physical shape.
[static noise]
[sirens]
[dramatic music]
I'm gonna pause it right here.
Again, dreams do come true, right?
Like I watched Casino Royale
and I thought that was amazing
he's running up a crane
I hope I get to do that one day.
The productions did grip
tape my crane as well.
It is clearly not as high,
but it's 100% real and
practical with no wires.
But, we're in pause right now.
If you look closely at my mouth,
that is the Go Pro mouth mount in
I don't know why the editors
chose to use this shot
because I definitely did
this crane run multiple times
and maybe they just missed it,
but I think it's very
funny that it's in there.
Again, no wires, jumping over real gap,
there's a real drop below me.
So, if I scrub through,
I'm stepping off of
this wobbly little rail
and jumping feet first to this other rail
and then I continue on by
going rail to rail to rail
all the way up.
Again, every sequence like
this, I just try to build in
as much technicalities as I can
whether the audience can
see that I'm stepping
off rails right now didn't really matter.
It was just about trying
to show like the efficiency
of being in control while being chased.
So, next up we have the
classic scene from The Office.
The reason people out
at us, hardcore parkour
every time we're out training.
[static noise]
[grunting]
- Parkour!
- I love this clip because
they explain what parkour is.
- This is parkour.
The goal is to get from point A to point B
as creatively as possible.
- While, at the same time,
creating a whole ridiculous image
of what people think it is.
[yelling]
[grunting]
YouTube really started
to make parkour popular
because of all the
viewership it was getting.
So, people's interpretation
of trying to create
their own parkour clips to get
views looked a lot like this.
- Parkour! Parkour!
- There was people just trying to do stuff
and making an ass of themselves.
[Yelling]
You know what I do love,
is like how excited
and how much of a good time they're having
'cause that is kind of life parkour, man.
We have a great time out there,
but we definitely don't do leap frog.
[static noise]
One of the biggest things
that this captures really well
is the fact that they are making a video.
Not every day I go out and train
do I have a video camera recording me.
But I usually have one with me
and I usually am trying to film clips.
At this point it has
become essential, right?
Because we have Instagram,
we have social media,
we have YouTube.
We have all these different elements
that are allowing us to be
seen and build followings
which is getting us paid campaigns
and cool projects.
Really the growth of
parkour and free running
came out of people filming
and releasing those videos.
What started in the forums before YouTube
of getting these really
digitally bad quality clips
of someone in Russia doing a new trick
that you'd never seen before...
[static noise]
- Truck, to refrigerators,
to dumpster, 360 spin
onto the pallets, back flip
gainer into the trash can.
- [Group] Yeah! Gainer! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- What I love about this piece
is this is actually part of what we do.
When we go out,
especially when we are
training with friends,
we'll look at a thing and
go like can you do this?
Can you run, vault off of
this, step off of that?
A lot of the stuff he's
saying is actually real.
But what happens next,
I guess is real too.
So, for those of you guys who
don't know what a gainer is,
he's actually saying what the
last trick in the sequence
is gonna be is to stand on the pallets
and do a forward moving back flip
and landing somehow in that trash can
that's already filled with garbage.
[crunching box]
What went wrong here is that
he did not check his surfaces.
One of the most common
things that injures people
is that they don't test something.
They don't know if a brick
wall is sturdy enough
or a rail isn't wobbly or welded properly.
He just though, eh it's
got a fridge inside of it
and it clearly didn't.
- [Man Inside Box] Parkour...
- I' ll never really know the
positive or negative impact
that this scene has had.
Because I think what they
were trying to say socially
was like this is what it's not, right?
He literally goes,
this is what it is, this is what it's not.
But, what most people
took away from it is like
this same parkour and kicking
things is kind of funny.
So, whatever.
[static noise]
This next clip is super iconic.
It is District B13 and
the creator of parkour,
David Belle.
[static noise]
[intense music]
[glass shattering]
All right, let's stop it here.
This is super iconic.
The maneuver he's doing
is called an under bar.
He actually steps off the heater,
grabs a bar and then
shoots his feet and body
through a pretty tiny window.
This is real, I mean he's
doing it through sugar glass.
He goes all the way through
and it's a pretty legit
drop on the other side.
A lot of this sequence is efficient.
A lot of it seems really practical.
Even when he's stepping off of people
in that first clip.
Like, it's about speed and getting away
and that's what I love about this.
Is it just feels so, like, real.
Like, yeah that was way
faster than checking to see
if the door was open.
A lot of this stuff I've watched
I've tried to figure out
is he wearing a wire in any of it.
You might be like well
he's got no shirt on
so clearly he's not wearing
like a harness or a vest.
But there is something
called a Hong Kong harness
which is more like a belt.
It looks more like a climbing harness
and, um, I found a sequence
that we'll talk about later on
where he was wearing a safety wire
and I have to imagine that
he has one one for this,
but I don't think so.
I mean he comes in from
so deep in the door
that if there was a wire going out
it would be breaking on the roof
which means touching the roof
as he's getting pulled into this.
I love this, just pop,
slide, all the way down.
Again, almost like using
that under bar technique
to get into the window below him.
[static noise]
What seems a bit fake in
this piece of the chase
is his trust in a rope that
he somehow sees out a window
that has no shutters or anything on it.
We don't know if that's
attached to like an antenna.
Personally, wouldn't go jumping
out of a super high building
to a rope at full speed and just hope
that it saved my life.
I love that he's just like
now swinging completely
on the outside of this building
and kicking people on the face.
As he whips around the building,
this was the scene that I did see that
he was on a safety line for.
It makes sense to me.
I mean, again, he's part of
a major motion picture and
they can't risk him dying
because they did actually
do it pretty high up.
I don't know if you guys
have climbed a ladder before.
It's kind of difficult, right?
You gotta like, to where
are my hands and feet going?
He just like shoots up
that ladder so efficiently.
[static noise]
[dramatic music]
All right, I'm gonna pause it right here
cause I love this, I love this shot.
There's clearly some
like random boxes there
that made it easier for him to step off of
over this corner gap.
But I love the angle of this shot
because the elements are being
shown to the viewer, right?
There's this like spike fence.
It's at this crazy height.
If we back up to David
Belle approaching this
and just kinda scrub through it,
what we get to see is, like,
this really nice foot placement,
kinda hurls over the wall.
He's clearing the gap,
he's spotting his landing.
And the reason why I don't
think there is a wire,
and that this was practical,
is that we get to see him go
almost all the way through
until he does this roll.
He ends up not doing a
perfect shoulder roll.
The reason is because he was
cutting across this angle
and if he rolled the way
his momentum was going,
or wanting to take him,
he would've hit the other wall
that was on the outside of that structure
that he jumped to.
He's almost going what
we call a gymnastics roll
which you don't wanna
do outside on concrete
because it literally goes over your spine.
The point of doing a shoulder roll
is like you're trying
to go a rounded shoulder
where it goes across your back
and then just makes as minimal contact
with your spine as possible.
So, not a great roll David,
but I see how it was necessary to do that
and that made it the more
efficient route to go.
[static noise]
What makes this drop different
from a lot of the drops we're seeing
is, one, this is substantially
higher than most of them.
He's hitting his feet,
engaging obviously your strongest muscles
in our body, our legs.
Then he puts his hands down
and let's it kinda kick him forward
so that he can continue.
And because you're having
four points of contact
on the ground it's actually dissipating it
by a large percentage.
[dramatic music]
So, I love that in this
we're getting to see some
of the vaults, right?
We just saw David Belle does a speed vault
where his hand hits and
legs kinda slice through
and he goes over the obstacle.
And then the guy chasing him
does that classic kong vault
where we see both of those hands hit
and pulls his legs through
and continues with all that speed.
[dramatic music]
All right, definitely
worth a pause right here.
So, this gap is in France
and it's called the "Man Power Gap."
People have actually flipped this gap.
They've actually put up a fence
that makes the gap harder
because they didn't
want people jumping it.
But I believe people
are still now jumping it
and they have to clear the fence as well
which is a new element and challenge.
What's worth noting,
and it doesn't necessarily
make sense in the scene,
there's not much run up, right?
So, if you were to back it up,
right before the shot cuts out,
he's just stepping from one
side of this thing to another.
When we get to the wide,
it doesn't make sense
of where he's coming from.
So, all of a sudden he's
on this 10 foot platform.
How did he get there?
From this big slide we don't see?
I don't know.
Either way, this is real.
When we hit play, just
watch how much the rocks
kinda take that impact and shoot out
as he goes into his roll.
[yelling]
District B13, it is one of
most realistic portrayals
of parkour.
I mean there's very
little in it that seems
either unnecessary or flashy.
And that is part of David
Belle's history, right?
Like, he was at the core, the creator,
of parkour.
So much of what he trained
wasn't even just about
being fast and efficient and capable
of overcoming anything
that got it his way.
It was also about
challenging himself beyond
what you could imagine the sport is now
which is more of a like an action sport
and a lifestyle.
[static noise]
All right guys, well that's it for today.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope you guys had as much fun as I did.
Peace out everybody.
