The following is a recap of movie critic Michael Wilmington’s review of “Assault on Precinct 13,” which ran in Wednesday’s Tempo section.
“Assault on Precinct 13,” the story of an undermanned Detroit police station besieged by rogue cops, takes John Carpenter’s 1976 cult classic of the same title and updates it smartly and excitingly. The premise may be outlandish, but the movie rips and roars. Working with an excellent cast headed by Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne and Gabriel Byrne, the movie’s gifted young director, Jean-Francois Richet, shows a surprising affinity for American action films–even though he’s a Frenchman making his first Yank production with his first American cast.
Richet and screenwriter James DeMonaco obviously know Carpenter’s original movie, a brilliant low-budget, no-star indie about cops and convicts who are trapped in a phased-out L.A. precinct station, fighting off a bloodthirsty street gang.
But this “Assault” is more expensive and explosive. The setting has been switched to Detroit in a New Year’s Eve snowstorm and the villains to corrupt cops. Jake Roenick (Hawke) is a jumpy, tragedy-scarred desk sergeant who, along with genial vet Jasper O’Shea (Brian Dennehy), lusty secretary Iris Ferry (Drea de Matteo) and Jake’s psychiatrist, Alex Sabian (Maria Bello), must join forces with their jailbird cons, including simmering, dangerous gang leader Marion Bishop (Fishburne) and junkie convict Beck (John Leguizamo). Their mutual goal: to fight off the dirty cops led by Bishop’s old partner, Marcus Duvall (Byrne), who wants Bishop dead.
Carpenter’s plot, itself inspired by the great 1959 Howard Hawks-John Wayne-Dean Martin jailhouse western “Rio Bravo,” is well-recycled here. But the cast (especially Hawke, Fishburne, Byrne and Leguizamo) and technical firepower really make it work. This new movie won’t ruffle old fans, and it should also please audiences bred on the “street westerns” the original “Assault” pioneered. The French, it seems, can appreciate and do right by Americans–or at least by American movies. Running time: 1:49. MPAA rating: R (for strong violence and language throughout and some drug content). For a full review, visit www.metromix.com.
