Assault on Precinct 13

Home
Smell the Movies
Smell the TV

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	1976
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	John Carpenter
Genre:	Siege thriller
Starring:	Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074156/
Tagline:	L.A.'s deadliest street gang just declared war on the cops.
Favourite line:	"Got a smoke?"

Now I don’t often say this, but the remake of this much loved movie is, in my humble opinion at least, better than the original.

The plot:
A defunct police precinct, the 13 of the title, is merely hours away from closing down. At the same time a prison truck is transporting a group of inmates to a different precinct when one of the prisoners is taken seriously ill, meaning the truck is diverted to precinct 13. Separately, a man witnesses the brutal slaying of his daughter, caught in the crossfire of a revenge shooting.
Understandably enraged, he makes chase and kills the gunman, but is daft enough to hang around for the baddies to return with really big guns. He flees, and bursts through the doors of precinct 13, and it isn't long before The Bad Guys have recruited a veritable horde of assorted Bad Guys to besiege the police building. The police and convicts must join forces to repel the advancing menace, only thing being, they are swiftly running out of ammunition.

It's a low budget thriller, and is effective in places, but it is cripplingly slow in the build up.
The scenes of marauding hoodlums are highly reminiscent of similar scenes in countless zombie films, though these evildoers are very much alive, and Carpenter's trademark claustrophobia is present and correct.
The reasons for this not scoring higher?
Well, the aforementioned poor pacing, and the damp squib of an ending, which is a massive disappointment and utterly underwhelming.
Still, it does feature one of Carpenters most memorable scores.