As a general rule of thumb, most people aren't terribly observant about their surroundings. Long ago, a college professor proved that by staging a fake purse-snatching before class in an auditorium of around three hundred students.
Few even saw the incident, while those who did provided wildly varying eyewitness accounts about the perpetrator. When such an incident -- or anything else for that matter -- occurs during a moment of personal or mass panic, the tunnel vision effect is only heightened as observers go into the self-preservation mode of fight or flight.
Perhaps that's what director Jean-François Richet ("De l'amour") was hoping for in his high-octane, action remake of "Assault on Precinct 13." Originally made by John Carpenter back in 1976 (a few years before he struck mainstream success with "Halloween" and decades before he essentially retold the same basic story in "Ghosts of Mars"), that film itself was a remake of Howard Hawks' 1959 western "Rio Bravo" (which itself was just a feature length version of most any "we're pinned down" sequence from any war, action or western flick).
Carpenter's flick was brutal if visually and viscerally effective, but seems somewhat tame compared to the contemporary version that's high on the body count, but also scores in terms of piling up the plot holes. My guess is that Richet and writer James DeMonaco ("The Negotiator," "Jack") figured that if they could get people so wrapped up in the proceedings that they wouldn't have time -- at least as things unfolded at a hectic pace -- to observe such gaping chasms in terms of story, motivation and more, then their job was satisfactorily done.
For a while it is, as long as you don't mind the decidedly adult material and take no prisoners approach to storytelling and character survival rates. Despite having a rather large name cast -- compared to Carpenter's assemblage of no-name talent -- Richet has no qualms about making sure that many of those recognizable faces don't make it to see the end credits roll.
That may surprise some viewers, but anyone who's familiar with the "pinned down" premise certainly knows that when one's facing military enemies, criminals, sharks, zombies or attacking space invaders, not everyone makes it out to the other side alive.
In face, the story is incredibly simple, a point that helps it at first but eventually hinders its success. Boiled down to its basics, a handful of cops and even fewer incarcerated criminals must deal with an attack on a mostly deserted police precinct on a snowy New Year's Eve somewhere in a desolate urban section of Detroit. The twist here from the original is that the villains aren't who we initially think they were. Yet, that surprise revelation only adds to the film's credibility issues and doesn't help when the story runs out of gas and into an unforgiving wall of repetition.
***Spoiler Alert***
I liked the fact that the bad guys are really supposed to be the good guys as that adds some ethical dilemma to the mix (in terms of reacting to one of your own trying to kill you and you having to kill them in order to survive). Yet, the introduction of that new plot direction leads to far too many questions.
They include but certainly aren't limited to how the villains isolate everyone from a technological perspective (cutting the telephone lines is one thing, jamming every cell phone and radio signal is entirely another) and why they didn't intercept the police bus transporting the city's most dangerous criminal before it got to the obviously more fortified precinct (not to mention why the bus only has two cops on it for such a high profile villain).
Then there are the questions of why they don't use a quieter and more efficient means of attacking the precinct (tear gas, anyone), why their snipers are such bad shots at times, and how they think they're going to get away with their crime after discharging thousands of bullets and more at the building, thus leaving a lot of evidence.
***End of Spoiler Alert***
While the film does have a central character -- Ethan Hawke ("Before Sunset," "Training Day") playing a troubled sergeant who hasn't been the same since a drug bust went bad in the opening sequence -- the fact that there are many in the same boat as him somewhat diffuses one's rooting for the good guys to win. That's compared to say Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" where he was essentially the only hope against a far brighter and more resourceful group of villains than we have here (sorry, but Gabriel Byrne ["Vanity Fair," "Ghost Ship"] is no Alan Rickman when it comes to playing heavies).
Then there's the fact that the film obviously gets a bit repetitive, as there are only so many ways to showcase such a siege. Richet and company apparently realize this late in the film as they suddenly take the action out into the snowy, nighttime woods, but that change of setting doesn't do much for the film. It does add, however, more credibility issues as it would seem fairly easy for either "hunting" party to track down their "prey" via the footprints in the otherwise virgin snowfall.
The film thankfully has some decent bits of comic relief to temper some of the action and bloodshed -- mostly in the form of some occasionally quite funny dialogue -- and if one can turn off their higher mental functions, the effort does work in that sort of crowd-pleasing, cathartic fashion (much akin to a first-person shooter video game).
Yet, since the good and bad guys are intermixed throughout (in more ways than one), I was hoping for more bits of crossing and double-crossing. Sure, there's the inevitable standoff (where everyone holds their guns on the others in a moment of mistrust) and a few bits of "is he good or bad," but not enough to completely counter the repetitive nature and/or mask all of the "but why" questions that are surely going to arise.
Beyond Hawke who gets the lion's share of character depth and Laurence Fishburne ("Mystic River," the "Matrix" films) who plays the crime boss with a menacing stare that could burn holes through concrete walls, the rest of the cast and performances are okay for what's asked of them, but not much more.
Those under siege include Brian Dennehy ("Romeo + Juliet," "Cocoon") as the veteran cop, Drea De Matteo ("Deuces Wild," TV's "The Sopranos") as the office sexpot (noted by the lingering, introductory camera shot up her shapely, fishnet stocking covered legs) and Maria Bello ("Secret Window," "The Cooler") as a shrink who's less than calm and collected under pressure.
The prisoners who eventually join the fray include those played by Aisha Hinds (making her feature debut), Ja Rule ("Half Past Dead," "The Fast and the Furious") and John Leguizamo ("Collateral Damage," "Moulin Rouge!") as a chatterbox and conspiracy minded junkie whose sole purpose apparently is to irritate Fishburne's steely character.
If you can get past the myriad of plot holes, various bits of implausibility, repetitiveness and the fact that the film essentially runs out of ideas and steam before the final curtain falls, you might just enjoy this shoot 'em up to survive action flick. At times, I found myself carried away by the often effectively staged action, but the various problems and the fact that films such as the original "Die Hard" did this sort of story so much better makes this only a moderately "entertaining" diversion. "Assault on Precinct 13" rates as a 5 out of 10.
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