"Rush Hour" craze hits the South West!

Very interesting report on BBC Spotlight just now. Police and accident prevention charities are concerned by the rise of "par cours" in the South West. What is par cours? It's the leaping across buildings demonstrated in the BBC1 "Rush Hour" promo five years ago. Spotlight even featured a clip from Rush Hour in their report.

Now thereare concerns about the growing par cours craze in the region, which is apparently becoming as big a problem as "tombstoning" in coastal areas. Those partaking in the new craze will have long forgotten about Rush Hour, but wait for some idiot BBC-hating journo to pick up the story...

The "extreem sport" you refer to is PARKOUR

Thanks Stuart - I didn't have the subtitles on so the spelling was a complete guess...

I'm not sure about the accuracy of that story since Jackie Chan has been doing that sort of thing throughout his entire movie career, long before Rush Hour.

I personally know very little about the sport but I believe it has a French origin.

I can't remember if it was a national or local news report but a while ago I saw a story about one small town was paying professionals to teach in kids the sport safely in a bid to keep them out of the town centre.

It was invented by Frenchman David Belle (who was the man starring in Rush Hour ), and is properly called le parkour (derived from parcours du combattant which is an apparently infamous form of military training using obstacle courses) and when executed properly can be brought down to a fine art. However, jumping between buildings/bridges/etc is dangerous without the proper training.

And BTW, people who perform le parkour are technically called traceurs or traceuses .

I didn't have the subtitles on either, but there was a very brief graphic which did show the spelling. You can be forgiven for your guess however as the sport does seem to have french origins (as the previous poster mentioned) looking at the names given to participants:


A very dangerous pastime when not done in a supervised and safe environment. But I supposed the danger is an important element which attracts those who take part.

Personally I have enough trouble parking on the top of a multi-storey car park and looking over the edge, never mind leaping off it onto the roof of an adjoining building.

I don't think this can be blamed on the BBC "Rush Hour" trailer - even though I did think it was irresponsible at the time and used to make my stomach churn just watching it.

There's an excellent example of le parkour during the first major action sequence of the new Bond movie Casino Royale. Not to mention the French movie District 13 which is a very good action movie.

Most people who saw Rush Hour would have been left in awe by it but would never have contemplated copying what they had seen. How many people had an overwhelming impulse to climb to the top of the nearest skyscraper and stage play-fights after watching another well-known TV ident? There you go.

There have always been extreme stunts on TV in one form or another - but the majority of viewers treat it as it's intended - purely as entertainment.

I couldn't agree more.

They most likely only included the BBC trailer because it was free to use!

Shame they couldn't have got hold of a broadcast-quality clip, then.