Assault on Precinct 13 Review
by Susan Granger (ssg722 AT aol DOT com)January 27th, 2005
Susan Granger's review of "Assault on Precinct 13" (Rogue Pictures/Focus Features)
As remakes go, this action thriller is a notch above the rest. Granted, the characters are predictable caricatures and you could drive a police cruiser through the plot loopholes. Nevertheless, there are enough intriguing new twists to be entertaining.
An end-of-the-year blizzard has stranded a prison-bound van carrying a fierce, formidable crime lord (Laurence Fishburne), a fast-talking junkie (John Leguizamo), a small-time hustler (Jeffrey "Ja Rule" Atkins) and a gang member (Aisha Hinds) at Detroit's aged Precinct 13, which is in the process of closing down. An injured, troubled police sergeant (Ethan Hawke), a soon-to-be-retired veteran Irish cop (Brian Dennehy) and a gum-cracking secretary (Drea de Matteo) are in charge. Plus there's the sergeant's psychiatrist (Maria Bello) who stops by for a curiously improbable appointment on New Year's Eve. Yet when heavily armed, masked gunmen break in, led by a federal agent in charge of an Organized Crime and Racketeering Squad (Gabriel Byrne), it turns out that maybe the good guys and the bad guys aren't exactly who you thought they were.
The original version was made by John Carpenter back in 1976, before he made "Halloween," as an homage to the 1959 Howard Hawks film "Rio Bravo," starring John Wayne and Dean Martin, whose voice is on the soundtrack. Now in his English-language debut, French director Jean-Francois Richet and screenwriter James DeMonaco ("The Negotiator") changed the claustrophobic location of the carnage, injected more clichés and upped the brutal, explicit violence quotient on a contemporary note. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Assault on Precinct 13" is a serviceable 6. It's yet another loud, profane, bleak action thriller.
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