The numbers are cruel on this Carpenter rehash.
Remakes are tricky business. Based on the 1976 John Carpenter (
Halloween
) film of the same name,
Assault on Precinct 13
opens with Detroit policeman Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) delivering a twitchy speech about the mystical properties of heroin during an undercover operation. Jittery camera work and a grimy color palette give the
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scene a frantic energy and the audience a reasonable hope for good things to come in the ensuing 100 minutes. Flash forward eight months, and Roenick is wreck, a pill-popping alcoholic plagued by depression and working behind a desk in a dilapidated police station.
Due to close its doors for good, the precinct plays host to a number of "guests" one final time when a snowstorm prevents a bus load of criminals, including gangster Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne), from being transported to the county holding facility. A team of crooked cops, led by Duvall (Gabriel Byrne), want Bishop dead and lay siege to the station forcing the police inside to fight alongside the criminals in order to survive the night.
There's a lot of plot to wade through as the film opens-establishing Roenick's depression, introducing all the characters and getting them to Precinct 13, but director Jean-Francois-Richet (
All About Love
) handles the information overload deftly, creating a coherent series of scenes that sets up the meat of the film (the "assault") without seeming forced. Even a cliché character like Brian Dennehy's Jasper O'Shea, an aging police officer due to retire, feels natural.
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The other supporting roles like Smiley (Ja Rule), who talks about himself in the third person and Beck (John Leguizamo), who babbles about government conspiracies, are forced to support the bulk
of the story as the main cast fails to come alive beyond the initial set-up. Byrne is reduced to muttering the same lines over and over again and Fishburne copies himself in the
Matrix
Trilogy with a stiff, robotic performance. And if Hawke is trying to compete with ex-wife Uma Thurman for her action hero crown, he has a lot to learn.
The energy and early promise of
Assault
shows a director desperate to overcome the remake stigma and clearly talented enough to do it. But for all of Richet's skill, the film begins to sink into the muck as it plods on. The action, coming at first in short, tense bursts, becomes erratic and ridiculous. An eye is gouged out with an icicle and a bus blows up, but sub-Carpenter gore and explosions aren't enough to disguise a film that has run out of steam.
