Assault on Precinct 13

Director: Jean-François Richet
Main Cast: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gariel Byrne, Brian Dennehy
Writer(s): James DeMonaco
Director of Photography: Robert Gantz
Producer: Pascal Caucheteux, Jeffrey Silver, Stephane Sperry
Editor(s): Bill Pankow
Original Score By: Graeme Revell
Release Date: 2005 January 19

The best part of this film occurs before the beginning of the opening credits. Hawke plays an undercover cop acting as a hyperactive drug pusher in the middle of a drug deal. Things go awry and the scene turns deadly for many of those involved. The pace, filming, sets, and lighting communicate the intensity of the situation and its unfortunate conclusion. The use of handheld camera, while somewhat dizzying, gives a first-person perspective on much of the action. The slick well-delivered dialogue, though caricaturized, also plays well between the characters. The introductory scene concludes with a camera’s closing iris fading to black from the point of view of one of the characters slipping away into death. Unfortunately, this is where I should have let my eyes close as well.

A remake of John Carpenter’s original 1976 cop thriller on a budget, this version was an unfortunate reminder of why some movies should remain in their tombs. The story was far too simplistic and underdeveloped. I was neither motivated to root for the good guys nor feel hatred for the bad guys. It reeked with an extreme scent of indifference toward the characters, the story, and most importantly, the audience.

The gaping holes in the plot had the tendency to force my mind to wander. How does a group of dirty cops attack a precinct office with a SWAT team chopper and expect that no one will ever find out? How will they account for their expended ammunition? Can their cover-up mentality really be this dense? Conveniently there is no power, cell phone service, or email to communicate with the outside world from inside the closing precinct office. These things are all explained away, but were still flimsy and unlikely. The few plot twists that existed didn’t make up for these poorly conceptualized inconsistencies. And the storyline revelations, quite honestly, were not that impressive or unpredictable to begin with.

There were a couple of character assassinations (literally) that took me by surprise. I’ll give credit to the writer and director for not shying away from clear, unashamed brutality. In this respect, they had no fears.

Amazingly, all the shooters, except, a little too conveniently at times, the “good” guys, were unusually adept at shooting people right in the center of the forehead with any weapon they happened to be wielding at that moment from astonishing distances. Following the successful impact the audience is served the glorious souvenir of excruciatingly long lingering on the bullet-sized hemorrhaging head wounds as a trophy of the characters’ mind-boggling accuracy.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a mindless action flick just as much as the next guy, but this one just did not have any distinctive qualities that were capable of holding my attention or making it notable. It did not make me think, it did not keep my interest, and I wasn’t shocked by the violence. In the end, the movie was not even entertaining. That is when you know a film has truly fallen flat, if you could not even extract an ounce of enjoyment from it. This one was as dry as the Arizona desert.

Since the story was less than spectacular, or even original, I had hopes that perhaps the characters would be somehow remarkable. But, alas, I was once more disappointed. The development of characters was essentially nonexistent. The characters primarily consisted of two-bit lackeys designed to fill the air with worthless conversation and curse words. Occasionally, when someone would say something interesting, it would be quickly followed by something ridiculous that sucked the steam right out of the partially intelligent comment it trailed. Hawke was afforded the most opportunity to deal with his guilty past, but even this came across as somewhat contrived and substandard. To be fair the execution of the characters was not wholly sub-par, merely the development of them within the story. In my opinion, Leguizamo was sensational. He was the one shining thing about this film. He gave an exceptional performance with material that was less than stellar. Fishburne played the cool collected gangster well, but it reminded me suspiciously of a rehash of his character in The Matrix.

In an interesting companionship between Fishburne, the worst of the bad guys, and Hawke, the best of the good guys, they frequently repeated the phrase, "Looks like our sh--'s on pause" to remind each other that the differences they have with one another are going to have to wait until they settle things with the dirty cops trying to kill them. It does offer an interesting, albeit perverted, take on camaraderie, but it ultimately fails to come to any sort of fulfilling fruition. Indeed, I kept thinking to myself as I watched, “I wish I could put this sh-- on pause”. Nevertheless, I suffered through.

What the movie lacked in substance, it also lacked in style. Mostly mundane techniques and boring execution saturated the film's entirety. Richet does get credit for using a lot of bullets. My suggestion: Take a lesson from John Woo and when you use bullets in excess couple it with visually intriguing filmmaking or a mentally stimulating story. I think you'll find the end result is much more rewarding.

Bottom Line: An unfortunate soiree of gangster thieves, crooked cops, and helpless ladies. Hawke is written in to merely to save them all and escape his personal demons, a task at which he barely succeeds. The desire to watch this movie again or even recommend it follows only a highly accurate shot to the head in a list of things I'd love to do. Underdeveloped story, over-the-top and trite characters, predictable twists all add up to a film that starts with a bang and ends with a thud. This is one that should have stayed in the vault.

An execution-style, 3 out of 10

~RG