Parkour in popular culture

Parkour—an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body—has appeared in various television advertisements, news reports and entertainment pieces, sometimes combined with other forms of acrobatics like free running, street stunts and tricking. Such acrobatics are not part of parkour.

Films

 * After including parkour moves in a chase sequence in the film Taxi 2 (2000), in 2001 French filmmaker Luc Besson made a feature film, Yamakasi&mdash;Les samouraï des temps modernes (Yamakasi&mdash;the modern-day Samurai), featuring members of the original Yamakasi group. The film tells the (fictional) tale of a group of young friends who use their parkour skills to evade capture, while stealing money to fund the healthcare of a child that was injured copying their parkour training. In 2004, Besson wrote Banlieue 13, another feature film involving parkour, starring David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli; English-dubbed and -subtitled versions were released in 2006 as District B-13 in North America, and the UK. Later, members of Yamakasi group filmed for France 2 channel a documentary called Génération Yamakasi - Vol au dessus des cités.


 * The biggest interest surge to date was created by the documentary Jump London, which explained some of the background to parkour and culminated with Sébastien Foucan and two other French traceurs (Johann Vigroux and Jérôme Ben Aoues) demonstrating their parkour skills at many famous London locations: HMS Belfast, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Somerset House and the Tate Gallery and Saatchi galleries amongst them. It is perhaps worth noting that David Belle received no mention in Jump London, despite often being accredited as the most important founder of parkour. Jump London was followed up by the sequel Jump Britain, once again featuring Foucan and Ben Aoues.


 * The 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale features Sébastien Foucan in a chase taking place early in the movie that implements many aspects of parkour, specifically Foucan's related discipline of freerunning. The mainstream success of Casino Royale served to bring parkour to the attention of a wider audience and was emblematic of that movie's attempt to unite the superheroics of the James Bond franchise with a "real world" aesthetic.  Casino Royale's release sparked a renewed media interest in parkour and related disciplines and a large amount of recent mainstream parkour coverage dates to around Casino Royale's release.  Along with The Bourne Ultimatum, Casino Royale is credited with starting a new wave of parkour-inspired stunts in Western film and television.


 * Parkour is featured prominently in the 2006 film Breaking and Entering, in which two of the characters employ parkour techniques to burgle an office in the Kings Cross, an area of London.


 * The werewolves in the movie Blood and Chocolate used (in their human form) what appeared to be parkour as a demonstration of their superhuman agility.


 * In the movie Live Free or Die Hard, Rand (played by Cyril Raffaelli), a sharpshooting hitman, uses parkour to both escape and pummel detective John McClane.


 * In the 2009 film "Paul Blart: Mall Cop", two of the thugs use parkour as a method of traveling through the mall.

Literature

 * Issue 6 of the limited series Global Frequency, written by noted comic book author Warren Ellis, tells the story of a young traceuse named Sita Patel who is tasked with the seemingly impossible mission of crossing London in under twenty minutes to defuse a biological weapon. The issue, titled The Run, is a varied and detailed (and mostly believable) treatment of the topic and remains one of the most memorable issues of the comic's publication. The series was published by Wildstorm Comics. In 2004, Global Frequency was nominated for an Eisner Award.  This depiction in a critically acclaimed series by a high-profile speculative fiction writer helped give parkour a fashionable, exotic, and mysterious image among a young, educated and trend-conscious demographic.

Television

 * Cops and Robbers includes Parkour sequences.


 * The Australian version of 60 Minutes featured a segment of parkour on September 16, 2007, which featured Sébastien Foucan on a trip to Australia, and French traceur Stephane Vigroux.


 * On the first episode of Season 6 of The Office, Michael, Andy, and Dwight display a failed attempt at "Parkour" which ends when Andy tries to jump onto a box with a refrigerator in it, which, in reality, was an empty refrigerator box.


 * In the pilot episode of Chuck, Bryce Larkin uses Parkour in an attempt to escape after stealing and destroying The Intersect.


 * The television show Burn Notice featured a brief display of Parkour during the episode 'Truth and Reconciliation'. After being seen by Fi, an assassin (Victor) leads Michael on a brief chase, utilising some basic Parkour techniques.


 * The television show The Unit introduced a new member "Sam" in the fourth season with a brief display of Parkour that allowed the character to set an infiltration speed record.


 * The television show House M.D., Season 6, Episode 6, Brave Heart featured an opening scene with detectives chasing a felon who uses Parkour to elude them.


 * The television show Man Vs. Wild, Bear Grylls shows parkour as a way of movement through the wild.

Video games

 * In Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II, the character that the player controls exercises parkour.


 * Crackdown is a 2007 videogame released for the Xbox 360 which has been claimed to feature parkour elements. The elements in question are high running speeds, a superhuman ability to jump vertically and horizontally (in some cases clearing entire buildings) and an emphasis on gripping and vaulting from ledges and protruding objects.  These elements are designed to make players feel fully in control of their own movement, and by extension fully in control of their environment (the city in which the game takes place), and are noteworthy within a wider movement in game design to achieve these goals.


 * Tony Hawk's American Wasteland: the character that the player controls can use several parkour techniques whilst not on the skateboard. In the game parkour is erroneously referred to as free running. It is possible to wall-run, wire-grab and execute other parkour movements.


 * Mirror's Edge is a 2008 videogame notable for having its core gameplay consist of parkour techniques such as wall-running, vaulting, break-falls and kick-and-spin jumps. Rather than using movement as a means to travel between goals, Mirror's Edge made movement itself the goal, and allowed players to overcome armed opponents by outrunning and outmaneuvering them rather than engaging them with violence.  The game was innovative for presenting this movement-focused gameplay from a first-person perspective, depicting the main character's arms or feet coming into the player's field of view in a way that in earlier first-person games like Doom and Half-Life was used to depict guns or tools, and thereby using the game's interface to coach players to use their avatar's body and athleticism to solve problems rather than weapons or objects.