The Assault(s) on Precinct 13

I wanted to write a review of the original Assault on Precinct 13, but I never had a good reason to. And then I saw that both versions were available to watch on Netflix.

Assault on Precinct 13 (Jean-Francois Richet, 2005)

A well known gangster (Laurence Fisburne) has dirt on corrupt cops (led by Gabriel Byrne). Said cops lay siege to the station where he is being held.

I was not against this movie - this premise is too good (Carpenter re-used it himself a couple times).

A lot of the creative decisions in this make sense - first of all, the cast is terrific.

Laurence Fishburne is great as the anti-villain Marion Bishop - a cold fish who decides to throw his lot in with the other people inside because it will ensure his survival. Ethan Hawke is a fun re-fresh of the lead - in this version he is a former undercover cop who lead his team into an ambush, and has been traumatised by it ever since. Brian Dennehy adds some flavour as the veteran officer who distrusts the freed prisoners.

The film also takes place during a snow storm, which adds another layer of peril to our heroes' predicament.

The one damp squib is the villains - the film cuts to their side of scenes so often that the suspense dissipates. The film is fine, but it is impossible to ignore the economic brutality of Carpenter's original version.

Speaking of which...

Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)

When a stranger stumbles into Precinct 9, it is up to the few occupants (the station is closing down) to defend it when a mysterious street gang surrounds the building, determined to take their vengeance on those who would cross them.

This was the first John Carpenter movie I ever saw. 

The acting is wooden, the sets are bad and some of the exposition is clunky, but this movie is a great example of none of that matters.

It helps that the script is stripped down - Carpenter gets all the key players into the titular location quickly, but takes time to establish the environment through strong use of widescreen cinematography and the first of his iconic scores.

His theme for Assault on Precinct 13 is simple but propulsive. Halloween may be more famous, but Precinct 13 is just as unsettling.

While the film resembles an action movie, Carpenter draws on the language of the western and horror movies to realise the film's antagonists.

While the remake puts a face and motive to its antagonists, Carpenter presents Street Thunder as an unknowable, unstoppable mass of bodies. It is a testament to the young filmmaker's execution that he makes a group of guys in flared trousers terrifying. Often, he frames them dead on as near silhouettes, marching toward the camera or standing dead in the centre of the frame like automatons. 

Carpenter rarely gives his antagonists context - there are a few references to the multi-ethnic mix of the gang, but no real sense of what brings them together. They are defined by the violence they enact and their silence. You can definitely see their DNA in the spectral Michael Myers in Halloween.

If the remake has one thing over the original, it is in the character of Napoleon Wilson. The film wants to present the convicted murderer as an anti-hero but Darwin Joston is slightly miscast. I like him, but you really get a feel for what Carpenter was trying for in the remake. Laurence Fishburne manages to make Bishop likeable without ever losing his edge. His character is still a bad guy - Joston lacks that bit of something to make Napoleon feel more unpredictable.

While Joston is not selling what the film intends, it is a testament to Assault on Precinct 13's strengths that this bit of miscasting does not amount to anything. The film is a testament to low-budget genre filmmaking - the individual components might jostle, and they might look cheap, but together they amount to greatness.

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