“There are
no heroes anymore Bishop, just men who follow orders.”
There are several interesting things
about John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” one is that there is no
Precinct 13 in the film, another is that many people know it was remade a few
years ago with Ethan Hawke and Morpheus from “The Matrix”, but few know that
the original itself was a slight remake of “Rio Bravo”, only no John Wayne and
no singing. It does however have plenty
of shootouts, bad hombres and that all too wild western feel. Coming out the same year as classics like “Taxi
Driver”, and “Rocky”, Carpenter’s feature sophomore effort was a feat to behold. It is filled with methods, music, tones, and tropes
that became unique signatures in all his films to follow.
The movie
begins with a group of teens getting shot down by police, and through a news broadcast
we learn the gang Street Thunder has got a hold of automatic weapons, enough to
be an unstoppable force. Then it turns
to the main cast of characters including a father and daughter, three cons being
transferred to Death Row, a new Lieutenant, and a police precinct at the tail
end of moving to a new building. About
thirty minutes in the Carpenter shows he’s not messing around when he breaks
one of the unwritten movie rules. I won’t
tell you which one, but you’ll know it when you see it, it’s pretty shocking. Eventually it all comes down to both cons and
cops being trapped in the closing precinct while they are surrounded by
faceless gang members “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” style. There are several two to three minute shoot
outs that foreshadow the alley brawl from “They Live”. It just goes on and on, so much so that one
of the characters calls out the time of the shootout, and that someone is bound
to have heard and called for more police.
I don’t want
to gush too much about “Precinct 13”, because it does have its problems, some
scenes are very cheesy, the lighting is too much like a horror movie, the dialogue
is clunky, and some of the camera set ups are done on the cheap with mixed
results. All in all, it’s worth seeing
if you’re a fan of John Carpenter films, watching his early work you can see
the genius pushing his way out of the indie realm into big budget creature features. This is one of those films that screams old
school, and shoots like it too.
--Robert L.
Castillo
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