‘Assault on Precinct 13’

Edge-of-your-seat violence keeps the adrenaline flowing in this barrage of bullets, blood and bad language.

By: Bob Brown

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Above, Ja Rule (left) and Maria Bello (right) help, below, Laurence Fishburne (left) and Ethan Hawke (right) against a determined gang of trigger-happy criminals in Assault on Precinct 13.


   If this movie were an 8-year-old, it would have its mouth washed out with soap and be sent to bed without dessert. Everyone in it swears like a navvy and misbehaves. The cops are so nasty that the crooks look like choirboys.
   But what are you going to do when the scene is Detroit? It’s no accident that the Motor City is the setting in bad-cop movies, like RoboCop. Right or wrong, it’s got a reputation for gleaming, hard-edged skylines, muscle cars and violent slums. Somehow Camden, the real statistical crime champ, doesn’t have the cachet.
   Assault is a remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 film of the same name, which was based on Los Angeles gang violence. Carpenter’s work was, in turn, indebted to Rio Bravo (1959), in which small-town sheriff John Wayne and a band of misfits fight to keep a murderer from being sprung from jail. It’s a nice pedigree, but this third generation is more concerned with entertainment value than depth.

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   The film marks French director Jean François Richet’s (État des lieux, 1995) American feature-length debut. He’s right at home in the underbelly of gritty inner cities — whose denizens look the same from Paris to Detroit. This time, the budget is obviously a great deal fatter than the $20,000 it took to make Richet’s first film. That was all he had from gambling winnings he made off his unemployment check. He filmed what he knew. Nevertheless, Rogue Pictures spent a lot of dough to give the American film the feel and look of a real-cops show, with plenty of handheld camera work and grainy, out-of-focus action shots. Funny how much money it takes to make a film look cheap. Not that all of it is blurry — just the action shots.
   It’s in-your-face from the get-go: tense, on-edge, loud and mean. Even the music has a punchy attitude. At first, it’s hard to sort out the good guys from the bad guys. And that’s deliberate. After a mind-rattling stint as an undercover narc, Jake Roenick (a very buff Ethan Hawke) is assigned more sedate duty, helping close an old precinct office on New Year’s Eve. But he requires regular appointments with an analyst, Alex Sabian (Maria Bello), to overcome his lingering traumas. Alex even comes for a New Year’s Eve touch-up — despite Jake’s heavy state of denial.
   Fellow officer Jasper O’Shea (Brian Dennehy) shares the precinct-closing chores, along with police secretary Iris Ferry (Drea De Matteo). Their party mood is dampened when a police detail dumps off a handful of offenders for safekeeping after a snow storm blocks their route to jail.
   Among the detainees is Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne), a notorious cop-killer and crime boss who has a reputation for sadistic violence. Soon, the station house is surrounded and penetrated by armed men. It’s assumed they want to free Bishop. But it turns out they have a different agenda that puts everyone in the precinct house on a death list. The reticent Jake transforms into a take-charge guy. He arms all the prisoners in the house to help battle the intruders. Odds are they’ll all die anyway, because they are outmanned, outgunned and suspicious of each other. But for the moment, as Jake tells Bishop, "We’ll put our sh-t on hold."
   It’s a standard, predictable plot, with a few surprises — some of which are real downers. If you can stand the barrage of bullets, blood and bad language, you might be able to stomach the action sequences. The editing and pacing are tops. That’s the juice you pay for in movies like this, not deeper meaning.
   The movie has an excellent cast, who add to the enjoyment more than anyone has a right to expect. Standouts are Hawke, who is convincingly nervy, and Fishburne, who deserves more recognition than he gets (maybe because he too readily accepts jobs like this). Fishburne’s restrained but menacing performance gives Bishop some roundness and ambiguity. He’s a sadist with a code of honor. Also edgy is the excellent John Leguizamo as the small-time, trigger-happy crook Beck. Gabriel Byrne makes a cameo appearance as the hardened assault leader Marcus Duvall, a methodically efficient psychopath.
   Right about now, if not sooner, you’ve decided whether or not this movie is for you. If you need edge-of-your-seat violence to keep the adrenaline flowing, this will do it. In the showing I attended, even the jaded crowd yelped in disbelief at some of the scenes.
   And for those who think Detroit is getting a raw deal, may I point out that this production never got anywhere near Motown. It’s filmed on soundstages and in that Everycity, Toronto, which is a good, cheap stand-in for virtually any U.S. city. If it were a food, you might say, "It tastes like chicken."
Rated R. Contains strong violence and language throughout, and some drug content.