Product Description

A POLICE SERGEANT MUST RALLY THE COPS AND PRISONERS TOGETHER TO PROTECT THEMSELVES ON NEW YEAR'S EVE, JUST AS CORRUPT POLICEMAN SURROUND THE STATION WITH THE INTENT OF KILLING ALL TO KEEP THEIR DECEPTION IN THE RANKS.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17046 in DVD
• Brand: UNI DIST CORP. (MCA)
• Released on: 2005-05-10
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Serbo-Croatian
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 109 minutes

Amazon.com
Action buffs will have a fine time with the spray of bullets, shattering glass, and pyrotechnic silliness that makes up the bulk of Assault on Precinct 13. Updated from the little-known cops-and-robbers classic John Carpenter made in 1976 (two years before he made his name with Halloween), this high-concept thriller is mostly a lowbrow kill-fest, and is very happy with itself for being so efficient in both categories. A decrepit police station on its last night before retirement--New Year's Eve, no less--plays unexpected home to a gang of criminals who become snowbound in the basement lockup. Another mysterious gang of people who stealthily gather in the blizzard outside want one of the particularly nasty criminals (Laurence Fishburne) dead, and they'll take the rest of the precinct down too, by golly. The odd lot of characters trapped inside include a burned-out sergeant (Ethan Hawke), a sexpot secretary (post-Sopranos Drea de Matteo), an even sexier police psychologist (Maria Bello), and various other good guys and bad guys who variously go down in blazes of guts, glory, bullets, and fire. Hawke and Fishburne are opposite sides of the coin: the law, and the bathroom scale. Their need to partner in order to survive the guns outside is the movie's moral conflict, and both actors chew on Precinct 13's peeling walls and scuffed floors to drive the point home every chance they get. Obvious filmmaking fakery abounds in everything from the irksome snowstorm, frequent gunshots to the head, and a shadowy forest that conveniently presents itself in an industrial section of Detroit for the climactic showdown. No matter, this Assault is for non-thinkers who want blood and gunpowder, with no messy slowdowns for logic, please.--Ted Fry

From The New Yorker
Ethan Hawke stars in this tense and involving update of John Carpenter's influential 1976 police action thriller, which was in turn based on the 1959 Howard Hawks Western "Rio Bravo." The director, Jean-François Richet, opens the film with a slam-bang drug deal gone wrong and then slows things down for some character development-a decision that feels truly retro. The bulk of the film takes place inside a police station that's being attacked by a bunch of crooked cops. The cast includes Laurence Fishburne, Maria Bello, Ja Rule, and Drea de Matteo, all of whom give strong, no-frills performances. There's a simplicity to Richet's staging of the assault that harks back to the gritty, muscular work of Don Siegel, the director of such films as "Dirty Harry" and "The Shootist." -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A genre film with style and substance.
Going in I was expecting an Action film with two-dimensional characters and loads of gunfire caught on film with shaky camera shots to make them seem more violent than they already are. Instead of adhering to conventional 'Action' film nonsense and one-liners, however, the makers of this film have created a story where the characters are either likeable or interesting to watch and the violence is both realistic and often incredibly brutal. There are some cliche' plot twists that appear at the expected times, but to the credit of these storytellers they do not dwell on them as if the audience should somehow be wowed or shocked by the revelation(s). Thus any predictability is overshadowed by quicksilver action sequences or character-driven moments that are equally intense. This film has a strong cast of actors led by a very capable director and a fantastic production staff that give this film more style and substance than is typical of the genre. The photography is excellent and elevates the look of this movie to a highly professional level, as do all the technical aspects such as stuntwork and gunfire during the many firefights. The action is bloody, to put it mildly, with some gruesome kills that made even a seasoned Action film fan like myself cringe and wince. What I especially love about this film and with very few other Action flicks is that all the characters either get hurt or mortally wounded at some point during the story. No one escapes unscathed. In most other Action movies it gets ridiculous to see characters running through a swarm of bullets and not getting hit; for that alone, "Assault on Precinct 13" should be raised above the average Action film fare and revered for its exceptional use of violence as a means to an end rather than as a flashy way in which to deceive an audience into forgiving a film for falling flat during the quieter moments. Both Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburn lead the way with their star-power and the rest of the cast rally around them to help the viewers care about each and every one of them. This film is a pleasant surprise and a solid addition to the Action film genre. Thank you.

But, there was so much potential!
I'll cut to the chase. It's a decent flick with a few really kick a$$ scenes that COULD have been MUCH better, but as it is, it's only barely worth a rental. Certainly its not worth a purchase. Why? Read on.

1. Apparently, many people in the flick are AMAZING shots. During the flick, not less than people get killed with perfect headshots ranging in distances from 150+ feet away to point-blank range. Every one winds up with their eyes wide open and a neat little hole in their head (even when some of the ammunition used would have made their heads explode like melons if they took a shot like that). From .50 cals to .9mm, it doesn't matter.

2. Alternatively, the same people who get amazing headshots in once scene are the same people who couldn't hit the side of a barn with a shotgun in the next scene. In one part, there are four people, standing perfectly still firing full automatics at one another from a distance of about 12 feet, and not only does no one get killed, no one even takes a hit! What?

3. Lawrence Fishburne is essentially Morpheus again. As soon as he started talking I was like "you gotta be kidding me, right?" Same "cool" mannerisms, same tone of voice, same inflections, same quasi-religious comments, its almost comical. I was wondering when he was going to start talking about Neo.

4. Speaking of which, its interesting that apparently Mr. Fishburnes character is this incredibly powerful gangster, yet no one from his organization seems to care when he's arrested, taken into custody, or anything. For such a dangerous man, he certainly seems to have to deal with the situation completely on his own. There isn't even a hint that anyone from his gang cares at all that he's been taken away.

5. There is one scene where the bad guys flood the building with laser scopes. I assume that each laser sight is attached to a rifle or machine pistol, right? So what happened to all of them? There were like 30! Did they all just go home after that scene?

6. The "bad guys" obviously just want to kill everyone in the precinct. There is no indication that they want ANYONE alive. So if that's the case, why do they ONLY rely on flash grenades? At least twice they chucked flash-bangs at the main characters and successfully blinded them, when a simple grenade would have taken them all out.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but when I watch movies like this, it makes me wonder how stupid the director thinks the audience is. We have to suspend disbelief to a certain degree, but when a movie makes you go "Oh, PLEASE! Is this a joke?" more than a few times, you know they went wrong somewhere.

Second Assault
Assault on Precinct 13 ('05) compares with Assault on Precinct 13 ('76) only in concept. The former is a big budget, star-studded, cop drama while the latter is a lower budget, gritty, near remake of Night of the Living Dead using gang members in place of zombies. While the old John Carpenter film might loose certain viewers due to its slow, deliberate pacing, it has remained a classic because of its many layers and subtext. For the new Richet version, a dramatic cop vs. gang boss plot has been stamped in and all layers, subtext, and richness tossed out. However, the stamped in plot is pretty well put together, with its weakest most forgettable moment installed as a preface (haven't filmmakers realized that prefaces and flashbacks almost always signal a script problem?). The preface serves as bad character motivation for Ethan Hawke's Sergeant Roenick. Go get your popcorn after the opening previews and miss the `undercover blues' setup as to why Roenick turns into a pill-popping loser only to save the day by the end. That aside, the film works as an action romp. The shoot-outs are good, tension always fills the air, and there are even a few zombie references: the bad guys take multiple hits and just keep coming, they are all suited in such a way as to be stripped of individuality, and some of the gorier kills hearken back to the Romero classics. Byrne and Freeman are fun to watch, as both take their roles coolly, using smallness rather than the over the top bigness that Hawke uses (not that effectively). John Leguizamo and Ja Rule play throw away characters, and that's exactly what happens to them (and you won't be disappointed when it happens, believe me.) So, while it's no cop/horror/masterpiece... it is a fun Saturday night action flick.