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Universal / 109 Minutes / 2005 / Rated R / Street Date: July 13, 2010
If John Carpenter's 1976 Assault on Precinct 13 was no-budget, then the 2005 version is all-budget. But instead of spending the extra dough on more squibs, the filmmakers actually focused on a good script, an up-market cast, and a director who knew when to say when in the flash department. The result is an above average meat-and-potatoes genre exercise. Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne have some deliciously devious repartee, courtesy of a strong and sometimes surprising screenplay by James DeMonaco, who wrote The Negotiator. The film does run out of gas in the last ten minutes, but by then you'll have already committed yourself to respecting a throwaway film that all involved refused to throw away.
The idea of cowboys holding down a crumbling fort as the Indians close in is nothing new. Just rent Rio Bravo. Or the original Assault on Precinct 13. But here, who is a cowboy and who is an Indian is not so obvious. It is New Year's Eve 2004 and Sgt. Jake Roenick (Hawke) is about to enter his second calendar year as a burned-out cop. Eight months earlier, two of his officers were killed during a drug bust. Now, popping the pills he keeps in a matchbox and swigging the alcohol he’s stashed in his desk, Roenick presides over Detroit's Precinct 13 as it readies to be shut down forever. Along for the precinct's final moments of service are Jasper O'Shea (Brian Dennehy) who has just announced his retirement (betcha never heard that one before) and sexy secretary Iris (Drea de Matteo), insuring that the boys in the audience have something to look at should they tire of gunfire.
When a nasty snowstorm forces a convict-ferrying bus to make an overnight detour at the precinct, no one is pleased. Not only were Jake and company hoping for a quiet night of drinks and Dick Clark, but one of the prisoners is Marion Bishop (Fishburne), a cop killer so confident of his ability to survive any assault that he plays crossword puzzles between bouts of bad-assitude. With Bishop locked up with the other criminals from the bus, the precinct is besieged by heavily armed men. It seems they've come to rescue Bishop, but that turns out not to be the case. It's the first in a series of reversals and unlikely alliances that help keep us on our toes. In order to survive the night, Roenick decides to not only release the prisoners, but give them weapons. This works well enough, except for a strung out convict named Beck (John Leguizamo), who never completely grasps the concept that if they don't put their differences on pause, they'll all be dead by morning.
Assault on Precinct 13 is a cut above in all departments. The movie may not deserve its cast, but I suspect they were attracted to a fun genre piece they didn't have to be embarrassed about. In his first English-language effort, Jean-Francois Richet is not hamstrung by a self-destructive urge to impress us with frivolous, show-off camera moves. Yes, there's plenty of fancy lighting and flying bullets, but Richet serves the movie, the movie doesn't serve Richet. The broad strokes of the story are time-tested, but DeMonaco still finds room for interpersonal moments and strong dialogue. Getting everything resolved in exciting fashion does prove beyond his reach (I have no idea why there's a forest in the middle of Detroit). But except for his inability to provide a climax to justify all that came before, he never treats the material with disdain and, at the point where other writers would have stopped for lunch, he kept going that one extra beat.
Fans of the old Precinct will probably hold their noses while watching the new Precinct. But before you dismiss the souped-up 2005 version, give it a chance. The Carpenter film turned its smallness into a virtue. It lived and died on its neo-Western atmosphere because atmosphere is free. The new Precinct can afford whatever it wants and must stand up to the demands of a vertically integrated, first-weekend obsessed, MTV/Entertainment Tonight-culture that didn't exist in 1976. Given those handicaps, it's amazing the film is any good at all.
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