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ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (2005)
Action/suspense that does the trick, if not much more Enough has been changed in this remake/update of John Carpenter's film that one wonders why buying the rights was necessary; surely the makers of this weren't trying to cash in on the name of a movie so obscure that it has to be promoted as "one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite movies". Besides, the ol' "police station under siege" story is hardly one that requires story attribution. Unlike the original, this version actually is set in a Precinct 13. It's New Years Eve in Detroit, and the blizzard that's pounding the city forces the prisoner transport of a crime boss and assorted other lowlifes to pull over and take shelter for the night at that precinct, which is scheduled to close the next day and is operating with a skeleton crew of two emotionally crippled cops and a sexy secretary. Then, under cover of the blizzard, a team of well-equipped and -trained men besiege the precinct, either to spring the crime boss or to kill him. The plot is far from airtight; one character's treachery is dependent on impossible foreknowledge of the transport's stranding, and an escape tunnel is brought up (note how I don't say "discovered") at the most "Oh, come on!" time. I don't know how the assailants could think they could use all that equipment without somebody noticing its absence, but since their survival rate is likely to be low (wouldn't be much of a movie otherwise), I suppose they might not care. But then, I'm always saying I'm not into action movies anymore if they don't have a sci-fi or fantasy element, and while this has neither, I can't remember the last such action movie I enjoyed this much. The nighttime blizzard is effectively oppressive, and man - oh man, it's so sweet to see a movie with a rapper in it, where the rapper dies. It's especially satisfying in that he refers to himself in the third person. There's no wire-fu, the shootouts aren't fancy and ballet-like, and unexpected people go down at unexpected times - and that's important in a thriller these days, which so often operate under unwritten rules of probability of survival. It's always nice to see the likes of Brian Dennehy and especially Maria Bello (could've sworn I've heard that name, Alex Sabian, before) who is easily enough to cancel out Gabriel Byrne, the rapper and John Leguizamo, who plays the same guy who won't shut up he always does. Comparisons to the original are both pointless and inevitable, but that being said, the remake is undoubtedly the superior action flick, though it doesn't have the ruthless edge of the original, what with its psychologically wounded characters (nobody in the original had time for psychological wounds) and absence of on-screen child murders. Enough has been altered from the original to render moot, for this case anyway, the standard knee-jerk response to remakes that there must not be any original ideas left in Hollywood anymore. Titles, maybe. (c) Brian J. Wright 2005 BACK TO THE A's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |