Assault on Precinct 13 - *1/2
Now Playing: (2005, Jean-Francois Richet) [seen in theatre]
I know the rule of thumb is that I'm not supposed to focus too much on the similarities and differences between an original and its remake, but to hell with that. The film is called ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, a remake of (in my opinion) one of the greatest low-budget entertainments of all time, and if they didn't want the two films compared they should've renamed this new version. I mostly saw this out of curiosity, and as expected it doesn't stack up to Carpenter's classic, but more disappointingly it doesn't find any interesting new wrinkles on the formula. The 1976 film was inspired by Hawks' RIO BRAVO and its later re-imaginings- films in which a diverse band of characters are thrown together inside a fortress by fate, fighting off enemies trying to force their way in. Carpenter cannily combined this template with tropes of the zombie-invasion movie, in which the relentless outsiders steadily push inward, forcing the heroes into a smaller and smaller space. Richet, on the other hand, takes what is still a pretty good idea for a movie and drains it of all interest by repeatedly cutting away from the action inside the police station to events on the outside. This time we find out more about the various people trapped inside the station, but while it kind of explains how some of the characters ended up there, it also defuses the tension that Carpenter so effectively built in the original by underlining the protagonists' inescapable plight. So what if we find out that Ethan Hawke's sergeant character is troubled by the loss of his old partners, or that Laurence Fishburne's crime lord is being hunted down by the dirty cops for whom he once laundered money (or something like that)? If you're going to remake a classic and take away everything that made it work, you might as well just call it something else- THE POLICE STATION SIEGE or something to that effect, because this film just feels like a pale facsimile.