Parkour!
Parkour was quite a thing for a while, though I’m not sure if it’s as big a deal now as it used to be. Back in the day, YouTube was full of videos of people jumping off of roofs, skipping up walls, jumping over tables, and rolling around in the dirt. The main thing I remember about parkour was that, whenever anyone jumped over a bench, everyone watching had to go, “Whoa! HE JUMPED OVER A BENCH!” I also remember that the Divergent films were an attempt to present parkour as the key to surviving a dystopian future.
2010’s Leap opens with a college student spotting a guy named Shane (Alexander J. Bonda) leaping over a railing on campus. When Shane is asked what he’s doing, Shane replies, “Parkour. It’s from France.”
Now, really, that should have been a red flag right there. It’s from FRANCE! You know, the same France that surrendered to the Nazis and then spent years whitewashing the activities of the Vichy government? French is a beautiful language and the country has given us some of the greatest films ever made. Actually, to be honest, I love visiting France but still, when it comes to self-defense, they’re perhaps not the the best role model.
Soon, Shane is teaching a group of college students how to do parkour. There’s a lot of parkour in this movie and, for the most part, it’s scored to some of the mellowest heavy metal out there. When Shane’s students invite him to Bible Study, it upsets Shane’s girlfriend, Crystal (Chelsea Raugast). When Shane and his students decide to build a Christian outreach program around parkour, they start getting threatening letters. “Who could be threatening us?” one of the student asks. “Atheists,” comes the reply. Soon, Crystal is chasing Shane across campus and the two of them get to show off their parkour skills.
I really do have to mention the chase scene because it goes on for several minutes and it really doesn’t make much sense. (Crystal, who is apparently looking to kill Shane, drops her gun just so she can chase him.) What’s funny about it is that, even while running for his life, Shane still has to show off his parkour skills. For instance, when he sees a picnic table in front of him, he doesn’t simply run around it. Instead, he jumps on top of it and then rolls off. It reminded me a bit of the classic 80s action film Gymkata, in which a city in Eastern Europe was full of random pommel horses so that the gymnast hero could show off his moves while fighting the bad guys.
Leap was made for $200 and the cast was largely made up of volunteers. I have a weakness for low budget passion projects and I was willing to cut this film a bit of slack but then I reached the Bible Study scene where a youth minister explained that HIV was God’s way of punishing the nonbelievers for failing to follow him and that was such an icky statement that I can’t overlook it. The film ends with the end times approaching and the promise of a sequel. Can parkour defeat the Beast? We’ll find out, I guess.
Through the Shattered Lens 