Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student
newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and
it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've
decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed
to my editor, Noel, all those years ago.
There’s something
pleasant about a nice and tidy action movie: no emotional strings,
little character involvement, and an ample body count combined with
mounting destruction. Best of all is the sense of watching somebody
accomplish something under a sort of trial by fire, be it the
protagonists or the antagonists. “Assault on Precinct 13” is
exactly what it’s made out to be: simple entertainment in the form
of violence, and the end result is a typically Hollywood movie with
few disappointments.
There’s something
pleasant about a nice and tidy action movie: no emotional strings,
little character involvement, and an ample body count combined with
mounting destruction. Best of all is the sense of watching somebody
accomplish something under a sort of trial by fire, be it the
protagonists or the antagonists. “Assault on Precinct 13” is
exactly what it’s made out to be: simple entertainment in the form
of violence, and the end result is a typically Hollywood movie with
few disappointments.
“Assault” opens
with an undercover drug bust gone awry and the only survivor is Sgt.
Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke). Fast forward eight months and Roenick is
now a burnt out cop working the graveyard desk shift at Precinct 13.
On this particular night though, Precinct 13 is scheduled to close
down permanently, and to cap the whole deal off, a busload of
prisoners have to be kept at the precinct overnight until the roads
clear. Among the prisoners is Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne), an
organized crime boss, who had a number of dealings with dirty cops,
led by Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne). The one thing this group of
dirty cops won’t let happen is for Bishop to reach trial and end
all of their illegal activities. The result is a full out assault on
the precinct and all of its inhabitants in the hopes of killing the
key witness.
Granted, this movie is
a remake of a 1976 movie by John Carpenter and almost the same
overall movie, but what’s even more important is that this is
basically just a remake of any old western “hold down the fort”
kind of movie. Be it cops or Indians outside the safety of the fort,
it’s still the same movie. Director Jean-François Richet’s
remake modernizes the original story, giving it new action sequences
and even (gasp) adding some new plot twists. Whether these plot
twists are there for independent intentions or are merely there to
differentiate from the original is a topic that I will ignore for the
purpose of being polite. The movie does boast a nice supply of good,
wholesome violence and provided you can ignore the convenient plot
devices (dark and stormy night, forgotten tunnels, forest in the
middle of Detroit, etc.) “Assault” ends up being a pretty solid
piece of work. You don’t want to fool around with dirty Detroit
cops, since they have more firepower than the army and better
high-tech resources than the C.I.A.
Laurence
Fishburne is playing the same ubercriminal that Alan Rickman made
great in “Die Hard”, only this time the proportions of ruthless
criminal to intelligent villain are verging on cartoonish. Gabriel
Byrne is there, playing the overanalyzing leader, only this time, he
seemed to be a little confused as to exactly what type of character
he was supposed to playing; merciless killer one minute followed by a
river of deep moral conflict and personal reflection the next. Maybe
there were two different scripts; heck, that might explain the minor
inconsistencies in the plot.
“Assault” is a
pretty entertaining movie all around, especially if you enjoy some
good gunfights, big explosions, and a solid film about good guys
shooting up a bunch of bad guys.
