Dead by dawn
Duck low for the remake of Assault on Precinct 13.

By Cheryl Eddy

MADE ON THE cheap – low six-figures cheap – in 1976, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 pays homage to Rio Bravo, the 1959 Howard Hawks western about a jailbreak foiled by the unlikely combination of John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson. With no budget for hosses or other period trappings, Carpenter's Assault (made when he was just 26, two years before his breakout hit, Halloween) shifts the setting to a different wild, wild West outpost: a depressed Los Angeles ghetto, where the cops assigned to the soon-to-be-shuttered neighborhood station settle in for what they think will be a quiet last night at the old address. Too bad the improbably named Street Thunder – a multiracial gang who are dated in dress and manner but earn everlasting coldhearted cred when they cut down not just the local ice cream man but also his pigtailed lil' customer – have other plans, which pretty much boil down to annihilating everyone (including a trio of prisoners) huddled inside ol' Precinct 13.

As far as minimalistic, tense, and occasionally hilarious thrillers go, it's hard to beat Carpenter's early triumph, but French director Jean-François Richet actually does a (literally) bang-up job with his remake, also titled Assault on Precinct 13. Of course, with his rifle scope set on 21st-century audiences, Richet finds it necessary to add layers of meat (and some fat) to Carpenter's bare bones. Whereas the original film offers little in the way of character back story, the 2005 version goes the whole nine, supplying pill-poppin' cop Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke, still Training Day gaunt) with an eye-rollingly clichéd guilt complex (undercover deal gone bad, partners killed, blah, blah) – which is repeatedly underlined (and highlighted, and written in boldface) via the insights of his psychologist (Maria Bello).

Roenick's leadership failures have landed him a gig behind a desk at (soon-to-be-shuttered) Precinct 13, also staffed by a foxy secretary (Drea de Matteo) and a soon-to-retire older officer (Brian Dennehy). Richet's ante-upping includes making the original film's "white-hot night of hate!" (per the 1976 trailer) New Year's Eve and relocating the action to Detroit, where huge, plot device-worthy blizzards are in convenient supply. Along with, alas, Carpenter's signature synthesizer score, the new Assault also does away with Street Thunder and introduces crime boss Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne, who adds appropriate dramatic heft, even while rocking a shiny purple blazer) as the yin to Roenick's yang. In the original film, the Bishop character was a wise-cracking convict whose reputation as a killer seemed at odds with his heart o' gold. Fishburne's Bishop starts off stabbing a guy in the neck – during a church service – and maintains a humorless intensity throughout.

After Bishop is arrested, he's loaded onto a prison bus with a Con Air-style gaggle of ne'er-do-wells, including John Leguizamo as a babbling junkie and rapper Ja Rule as a crook named Smiley (whose most heinous crime is unrelentingly referring to himself in the third person: "Smiley don't like this shit!"). Bad weather reroutes the group to Precinct 13, where the assault soon commences. It seems Bishop knows a damaging lot about a crew of dirty cops guided by organized crime unit chief Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne) – and all those inside the station are now marked for death as a result. With snazzy gear Street Thunder never dreamed of (night-vision goggles, concussion grenades, laser scopes, etc.), po-pos start poppin' po-pos, to paraphrase a character in Assault who sums it up nicely.

As the good guys (plus a few bad guys, who've temporarily switched sides in the interest of self-preservation) hunker down inside the embattled station, desperate not to be sitting ducks for Duvall, trust issues become the major source of tension; multiple multi-gun standoffs result. Nods to the original – including a daring escape attempt involving a hot-wired car – are incorporated, but Richet's Assault is a less successful exercise in suspense building. Carpenter's film, cast with unknowns, had a persistent unpredictability; after the killing of the ice cream-eating moppet ("I wanted vanilla twist!") in an early reel, it became abundantly clear that any character could die at any moment. Richet does include an oh-shit-no-they-didn't murder, but it comes too late in the movie to set a tone of certain doom to come. Come on – like this movie's gonna end without a big scene between Hawke and Fishburne?

Still, despite the untouchable 1976 version looming over its shoulder, the remade Assault on Precinct 13 remains plenty recommendable, even with elements too familiar (Roenick's character arc) and too distracting (twitchy supporting cast members Bello and Leguizamo). It's savvy enough to modernize things with an acceptably amped-up conflict, but true enough to the original to retain ample B-picture values in a world that's quickly retreating into PG-13 wimpiness. Here, heads are reduced to red stains without hesitation, and the tone unfailingly stresses panic, anger, and even flat-out meanness – with only a quick smear of hope cutting through the grit at the finish.

'Assault on Precinct 13' opens Wed/19 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock for show times.