Originally published 1/24/2005
Assault on Precinct 13
Director: Jean-Francois Richet
Writer: James DeMonaco, based on the film written by John Carpenter
Producers: Pascal Caucheteux, Jeffrey Silver, Stephane Sperry
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne, Brian Dennehy, Drea DeMatteo, John Leguizamo, Jeffrey “Ja Rule” Atkins, Maria Bello, Aisha Hinds, Matt Craven
Director Jean-Francois Richet, making his English-language debut here after helming French films like All About Love, seems to have a particular fetish for perfectly round bullet wounds that appear right in the middle of the forehead. They’re all over this re-make of John Carpenter’s B-movie favorite Assault on Precinct 13, which is a good thing – since a bloodless PG-13 take on this story would have been a big letdown.
Thankfully we get the gritty, bloody and ruthless version, in which cops, crooks, crooked cops, and innocent alike get stabbed, shot, burnt, and exploded in the course of one long night. The dialogue (by James DeMonaco, co-writer of The Negotiator) is off-the-shelf hard-boiled stuff, the characters are more often referred to by their type than their name (we have Burnt-out Cop, Retiring Veteran, Secretary, Junkie, Criminal Mastermind, etc.), and the story is as old as movie gunfights. But the action is shot with clarity and zest and the actors commit their sweat and intensity. And the plot works as well as it always has.
In the original, which came after Carpenter’s loony micro-budget sci-fi comedy Dark Star and before his landmark slasher Halloween, a rookie policeman charged with minding shop at a closing old precinct must protect a man who killed a gang member. The gang lays siege to the under-equipped building, and the cop makes the hard decision to release and arm his prisoners (including a feared murderer) to aid in the defense.
Things are slightly more complicated this go-around; Hollywood types call this “raising the stakes”. Now instead of a fresh-faced rookie, our hero is Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke), a former undercover man haunted by a bust that went bad and got his partners killed. Now he bides time at a desk, pops pills, and avoids responsibility.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and at midnight the old precinct will be officially closed. So he, Retiring Veteran (Brian Dennehy) and the horny Secretary (Drea de Matteo) are drinking the night away when a prison bus arrives, seeking shelter from a fierce snowstorm.
Among the crooks in the back is a prize catch – Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne), the most feared boss in the Detroit underworld (there’s that raising the stakes thing again). It isn’t long before suspiciously well-armed men in ski hoods are trying to break into the cell block to get at Bishop.
The equipment is far better than in the original; night-vision goggles, laser-scoped assault rifles, concussion grenades, the works. They also, as Roenick discovers after killing one, carry police badges.
This is the drug squad headed by Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne) who has been on the take from Bishop for years and now needs to rub the crime lord out lest his entire unit be fingered in court. But now that those inside the prison have learned that cops are behind the attack, they’re all targets.
The middle stretch is the most enjoyable, as again and again the army outside attempts to break in, Roenick finds some way to defend the place, and the bodies pile up. There are ample creative variations on the theme, and not every encounter ends in the expected way. The characters spend a lot of talk on the subjects of jammed cell phone signals and the precinct’s isolated location – this is superfluous, as an audience we know it would be criminally boring of the cavalry to arrive before morning.
Early on, when Hawke is to act hollow and defensive, he’s not very good – later, shooting and giving orders, he’s better. Fishburne plays Bishop as Morpheus turned heel, using the same monotone, eyes-twinkling, coiled-spring attitude to suggest lethal malevolence held in check. Byrne, for much of the movie simply advancing the plot and glowering, gets a nice scene where for once we see the villain talk out his options and, not without emotion, choose his murderous course. The rest of the cast is effective, John Leguizamo working twice as hard to be both comic relief and dangerous loose cannon as the junkie.
As said above this is a fearlessly R-rated movie, where wounds spray and supporting characters are not treated with much mercy. Richet takes advantage of this without grossly wallowing in it and keeps the action moving briskly while never dropping our sense of geography. Technically the movie is mounted well, although points are deducted because of composer Graeme Revell, who provides another one of his bombastic punctuate-everything-as-loudly-as-possible musical scores.
There was a kind of eeriness to Carpenter’s original with its interludes of quiet, the nihilism of killer Napoleon Wilson, and the seemingly inexhaustible mob of gang members – it owed as much to the original Night of the Living Dead as it did to the western Rio Bravo, from which it got its plot. This modern version, where the storm never stops howling and the enemy is a high-tech, tactical force, is pure action – a game of paintball with real consequences. It provides distraction and entertainment as a good B-movie should, without pretense. And that’s hard enough to come by these days, but I doubt that competence alone will win it the cult of its predecessor.