Reviewed - ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13After decades of US remakes based on French movies, the adventurous Paris-based independent production company Why Not turns the tables with a French-produced - although US-set - remake of John Carpenter's gritty low-budget 1976 thriller, Assault on Precinct 13.
The original - one of Carpenter's earliest pictures, long before he self-indulgently imposed his name as a possessory credit in his titles - was less than original, being a reworking of Howard Hawks's classic 1959 western, Rio Bravo, embellished with imagery inspired by George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
French director Jean-François Richet's confident new treatment proves that a good story well told can sustain any number of retellings. It adheres to the narrative nucleus of Carpenter's movie, supplying greater motivation to its heroes and villains, shading divisions between both sides of the law, and providing its protagonists - and its film crew - with technology that was not available 30 years ago.
An arresting prologue, shot with nervy, handheld camerawork, establishes Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) as a cunning and tenacious undercover detective involved in a sting operation that goes disastrously wrong. Eight months later, on New Year's Eve, he has been relegated to desk sergeant - and is addicted to painkillers - at an isolated Detroit police station due to close down at midnight.
The precinct secretary (Drea de Matteo from The Sopranos) and an Irish-American cop (Brian Dennehy), who is about to retire, are in party mood when a fierce blizzard blows and a police wagon transporting four convicts, one of them a smug, intimidating criminal kingpin (Laurence Fishburne) has to make a stopover at Precinct 13.
The computers and most of the furniture have been removed as part of the closedown, the landlines are cut and mobile phone signals are jammed, as the occupants of the precinct come under siege from unscrupulous forces with masses of firepower.
As with any satisfying cover version, the movie takes on its own distinctive style and stays true to its era. It wisely jettisons the most shocking scene from Carpenter's film, the mindless murder of a young girl, and it is also refreshing that none of the three women inside the precinct are put there just to panic and do something stupid that imperils everybody else. The score, though efficient, is no match for Carpenter's memorable music from the original.
A lean and taut thriller that is sharply edited, the film makes effective use of the darkness of the hour and the snowstorm raging outside. The cast has been especially well chosen, and, while the movie is anchored in the edgy performance of the gaunt and intense Hawke, not for the first time John Leguizamo gives a scene-stealing portrayal, this time as one of the convicts, a loquacious junkie. Michael Dwyer
