Assault on Precinct 13 (Ws)
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Product details
Actor: Charles Cyphers, Gilbert De la Pena, Henry Brandon, Peter Bruni, Tony BurtonPrimary Contributor: Darwin Joston
Primary Contributor: Austin Stoker
Primary Contributor: Laurie Zimmer
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Letterboxed, NTSC
Running Time: 91 minutes
Release Date: 1996-02-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: New Line Home Video
Studio: New Line Home Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Assault on Precinct 13 (Ws)
Movie Review: 3 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
A gritty low-budget thriller, Assault on Precinct 13 offers interesting characters, well-directed action sequences and high levels of atmosphere and tension--anyone who likes this kind of movie could hardly do better.
Movie Review: One of the best horror movies of its time
Summary: 4 Stars
A street gang of seemingly unlimited strength and size lays siege on a police station, when the gang's leader is killed by a man seeking refuge in the station. After it becomes apparent that no help is going to come, the one police officer in the station, a rookie on his first night on the job (Austin Stoker), finds that he must join forces with the two prisoners in his care, if he ever hopes to survive.
"Assault on Precinct 13" is meant to be horror director John Carpenter's homage to "Rio Bravo" and I can see the similarities between the two films, but the movies that "Assault on Precinct 13" really brought to my mind, while watching it, are zombie films such as "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead". "Assault on Precinct 13" has all of the elements of a zombie film: it has a group of people trapped in a building that's cut off from the rest of society; a seemingly unstoppable "army" of villains who don't care about being killed and who never speak or have any personality (not much different from zombies); and a grand finale, where our heroes have no choice but to escape the building, while being attacked by dozens and dozens of "zombies". Viewed as a horror film, "Assault on Precinct 13" is one of the best horror films of it's time, and in my opinion, far superior to "Night of the Living Dead" or even Carpenter's next film, "Halloween". Even as an action film, "Assault on Precinct 13" is a pretty good movie, but I don't really see it as one.
This film is not without its fault. "Assault on Precinct 13" was made on a very low budget and it shows. The effects aren't as impressive as those that most action fans are probably used to, and many of the actors seem inexperienced and second rate. Nevertheless, the two leads, Stoker and Darwin Joston (as Napoleon Wilson, the prisoner who teams with the police officer), although just as inexperienced as many of the other actors, are still compelling enough to make you genuinely care about their characters. The script also leaves much to be desired (some of the passages in it are so bad that they are funny), but once you get into the film, that doesn't really seem to matter and I was interested to note that one exchange between Wilson and another character, towards the end of the film, is almost identical to an exchange between George Clooney and Juliet Lewis in "From Dusk Till Dawn", more evidence to suggest that this is, in fact, a horror movie.
Movie Review: Carpenter's best
Summary: 5 Stars
Forget Halloween, forget The Thing, Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 is his veritable masterpiece. It is endlessly cool, boasts his best soundtrack and his tightest direction, and happens to be one of the best thrillers ever made. Oh, and of all things, it's a remake of Rio Bravo! Sadly the soundtrack--one of the best soundtracks of all time--is almost impossible to obtain. The look and feel of this movie is unbeatable. Darwin Josten is incredible as Napolean, and, as Tarantino has said, it's amazing this guy did not become a big star. He's the spitting image of Chris Cooper.Movie Review: Remodelling a classic noir
Summary: 4 Stars
Ostensibly a remake of John Carpenter's cult favourite, the new and improved Assault on Precinct 13 acknowledges its debt to Rio Bravo early on with a couple of lazy Dean Martin Christmas jingles.
Martin was a deputy drunk in Howard Hawks's 1959 western classic, which is where Carpenter borrowed the plot for his 1976 cop drama. Hatchet-faced tough guy John Wayne played a bossy sheriff in the original; in that film, Dino and Duke keep a passel of bad guys from breaking into jail and grabbing their prisoner.
Same story here, except this time out we're in a condemned Detroit precinct on New Year's Eve, and the prisoner is a drug lord played by the lethally cool Laurence Fishburne.
The film's real departure, and gamble, is that Ethan Hawke, dweeb aesthete from Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, is now playing the Duke's and Dino's cop characters. Hawke's Sergeant Jake Roenick is both drug addict and precinct boss. That's a lot of character acting for a perpetual juvenile 25 pounds shy of either Cagney or Lacey.
Screenwriters Carpenter (he'll be redoing films at 100) and James DeMonaco wisely get us used to Ethan as a tear-away action adventurer in a ferocious pre-credit drug sting. Sgt. Jake throws himself around with nervous athleticism. Nevertheless, two fellow officers go down. And Jake catches one in the pin. Then, suddenly -- quick cut -- we resume action eight months later. Our limping hero is now a wisecracking junkie (Scotch and Seconal), trying to forget about A Time When He Cared.
Making matters worse, the force shrink (Maria Bello) shows up New Year's Eve, wanting to know why Jake is still hiding behind a desk in a soon-to-be abandoned precinct. Everybody else is long gone, except for a party-girl secretary (Drea De Matteo) and an aging cop, "Old School" O'Shea (Brian Dennehy).
Elsewhere, a mobster with a dangerous secret (Fishburne) is on his way to jail. Someone's trailing the van. Just as the expedition nears Jake's station, snow turns to ice and the cop car skids out of control. Driving is impossible. Detroit has been shut down. The van and its captives will have to hole up at Precinct 13 for the night.
One of this enlightened B-movie's many pleasures is French director Jean-François Richet's handling of atmosphere and setting. Shot almost entirely at night in a blinding snowstorm, the crime drama is an intriguing remodelling of a classic film noir. It's a black and white movie by function of climate and time of day, with vivid stabs of colour -- a spreading stain of blood in the snow, Bello's flashing gold hair and Jake's frightened blue-green eyes.
Richet also knows how to shoot action scenes. And his screenwriters scatter just enough bits of business and tough-guy patter around. Fishburne does a newspaper crossword puzzle for the first half of the film. And at one point a prisoner mocks a junkie inmate who, like Jake, is going through withdrawal by snarling that he's "sweating more than Mike Tyson at a spelling bee."
Another plus -- the supporting cast has been shrewdly chosen. Ja Rule and John Leguizamo score as petty criminals locked up with Fishburne. Gabriel Byrne, who decorated the crime classics Miller's Crossing and The Usual Suspects, is walking the beat. And it's good to see Drea de Matteo working her eyebrows and hips again after getting bada-binged on The Sopranos.
The film is not without fault. Hawke only holds his own as an action hero. And Maria Bello overplays a badly conceived character. Most of all, the film needs another player as potent as Fishburne.
Still, Assault on Precinct 13 is a smartly assembled noir package. Canadians in particular might find it perversely satisfying to watch somebody else curse and fight their way through a deadly winter storm. Conrad Alton, Filmbay Editor.
Movie Review: Decent idea but weak execution
Summary: 3 Stars
Warning : this review will have spoilers.
I saw this for the first time (and last - I can't watch the ice cream sceen again) last night. Ok movie, but I felt like I was watching a remake of "Night of the Living Dead" more than a gang movie. The way the gang members silently walked about outside and just mindlessly rushed the building later despite getting shot so easily, they seemed more like zombies. Granted, zombies with silencer equipted weaponry, but members of the mindless undead just the same.
As for the confrontation between the father and the gang members who killed his daughter, I found that very unconvincing. I think it would have been much more believable had he not found the gun in the ice cream truck but instead just rammed the gang members' car off the road with his own and than beat them to death with a tire iron (would have been more emotionally satisfying as well). It would also explain why he did not get into his car and drive away (which is something I did not understand).
Summary of Assault on Precinct 13 (Ws)
Before making the original Halloween into one of the most profitable independent films of all time, John Carpenter directed this riveting low-budget thriller from 1976, in which a nearly abandoned police station is held under siege by a heavily armed gang called Street Thunder. Inside the station, cut off from contact and isolated, cops and convicts who were headed for death row must now join forces or die. That's the basic plot, but it's what Carpenter does with it that's remarkable. Drawing specific inspiration from the classic Howard Hawks Western Rio Bravo (which included a similar siege on disadvantaged heroes), Carpenter used his simple setting for a tense, tightly constructed series of action sequences, emphasizing low-key character development and escalating tension. Few who've seen the film can forget the "ice cream cone" scene in which a young girl is caught up in the action by patronizing a seemingly harmless ice cream truck. It's here, and in other equally memorable scenes, that Carpenter demonstrates his singular knack for injecting terror into the mundane details of daily life, propelling this potent thriller to cult favorite status and long-standing critical acclaim. --Jeff ShannonThrillers Video
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