Assault on Precinct 13

By Matt Wenner

Assault on Precinct 13 was a movie that took me by surprise. It is a remake of the 1976 John Carpenter film of the same name which from what I understand, is a minor cult classic. Remaking movies nowadays is a tricky thing, especially one with a cult following. Having not seen the original, I can’t definitively predict how fans of the original will react, but for my part, Assault on Precinct 13 is a well-crafted action movie that pays homage to past actioners (with a strategically placed icicle for example) but also succeeds in not being your standard Hollywood fare.

The film begins with an undercover cop (Roenick) and his team attempting a drug bust. Things turn south and Roenick’s two partners are shot and killed. Fast forward about 9 months to New Years Eve. Roenick is stuck with a desk job at the titular Precinct 13. This particular station is in its last day of operation, and only Roenick, a secretary and another cop are working this night. There happens to be a bad snow storm that night, so a bus transporting prisoners is re-directed to precinct 13 to spend the night until the roads are cleared. There are 4 prisoners on this bus, including one crime king pin (Bishop). As it turns out, Bishop is in league with a large number of crooked cops, so if he is allowed to get to trial, all the cops will end up in jail. The lead crooked cop (Duvall) cannot let this happen, so he organizes a massive siege around precinct 13 in order to kill Bishop and anyone he may have talked to. This forces the remaining cops at the station and the prisoners to team up to try and survive the night.

Hawke did pretty well for himself as the burned out cop who becomes the leader of the group, but Fishburne definitely stole this movie. He was quite simply a bad-ass. He played it similarly to his role of Morpheus in The Matrix, but in Assault…he is a bad guy and Fishburne plays it very well. Gabriel Byrne wasn’t given a whole lot to do with his role of crooked cop leader other than to bark out orders and Ja Rule’s portrayal of a hardened criminal who refers to himself in the third person as ‘Smiley’ (I kid you not) was pretty awful but other than that, the supporting cast was excellent.

What differentiates this film from common action films was the sheer body count in the movie and the sense that anyone can die at any time. I would advise not getting too attached to any of the characters because there is the possibility that they could take a bullet at any point. Assault… doesn’t have any problems killing off characters that you are sure will last till the end. Also, the people attacking the police station are cops. They may not be the most honest cops, but their job is still to protect the public. They couldn’t all have been that bad, but many of them meet gruesome deaths. I don’t know that they keep records of this sort of thing, but this movie has to have a record for most head shots in a movie. It seemed as if every other scene contained someone getting a bullet to the head.

Assault… is a very good film, especially for the Hollywood action genre. It features a very good cast, bad-ass Laurence Fishburne and unpredictability that has you asking “Who are they going to kill next?”

Rating: ***

Released by: Rogue Pictures 1.19.05
Running time: 109 min
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and language throughout, and for some drug content.

Directed by Jean-Francois Richet

Starring:
Ethan Hawke ………………… Jake Roenick
Laurence Fishburne ……….. Marion Bishop
Garbriel Byrne ………………. Marcus Duvall
Maria Bello ………………….. Alex Sabian
John Leguizamo …………….. Beck