Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I know Harry ran a link to the trailer for this one just the other day, and now, here we are with an early look at the film itself:
Hey Harry, I got to see an advance screening of Assault on Precinct 13 so I thought I'd send in a review.
Now going in I only vaguely knew that this was a remake of a John Carpenter film and had never seen it nor known the story. So I had a fresh perspective of the film on its own. Sadly it didn’t manage to help, as the movie just didn’t have enough to warrant it good.
For those who don’t know, the basic premise is that Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) is a police captain who reluctantly leads a group of cops and criminals to defend the crumbling Precinct 13 from outsiders that want to kill mobster Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne).
This scenario is basically as thick as the plot gets, and since most of you know that those mysterious ‘outsiders’ are actually cops, the revelation isn’t much of one. I for one, going in knowing nothing, found it an interesting plot turn but the movie failed to pay up on the reasoning behind it. In fact, the entire backstory with Bishop and why those cops are after him is quite thin, and you have to wonder what the hell is wrong with the Gabriel Byrne’s Marcus DuVall to warrant it. It’s really quite unreasonable after a bit.
When the action really gets going, I found myself involved but had grown tired of it all too soon. There wasn’t much variety – everything consists of the cops trying to get in, and the rag-tag group of heroes trying to keep them out. After this is exhausted, the movie turns to a painfully predictable climax in, of course, a forest.
Perhaps this thin plot could have been somewhat redeemed if the characters were worth caring for, but any development is again boring and cliché. Ethan Hawke’s Roenick is the same old reluctant hero type with a past incident he can’t get over. Fishburne however was surprisingly amusing in his role, but the whole “dangerous badass” thing got old quick. Drea De Matteo was very annoying, and her chemistry with Hawke was nonexistent. Maria Bello was forgettable but the guys will be happy with the little black number she wears through the whole thing. And really, an old cop about to retire named Jasper? Why?
The convict characters were completely pointless. They really didn’t add any depth to the story, and the conflict between them and the cops was almost laughable. John Leguizamo managed to walk a fine line between annoying and funny, but the audience I saw it with seemed to like him. And admittedly I did laugh out loud more than once at some of his lines. But the rest were really just bad.
However, what gets me the most about this movie is the potential it wasted. This couldn’t have been shown more clearly by the first five minutes of the film. It was completely engaging – Ethan Hawke’s performance was amazing, and there was a dirty and gritty feeling to it that I absolutely loved. But as soon as this little prologue is over, it feels like we’re in a completely different film. If the rest had been as good, the movie would have been incredible.
Aside from this, there were a few good things in the movie that I did like. One of these being the surprisingly brutal violence that came in once in a while. When it shows up, its quite shocking and it wakes you up. However, my friend whom I saw the movie with thought the violence was the worst thing about it, so to each their own. Another was the level of humor in the film that came and went. Some jokes I thought were pretty bad, but others managed to get a laugh out of me. And though I complain about the predictability, there was one twist I did not expect.
All in all, the movie could have been good. I know Ethan Hawke can act, I mean the first five minutes prove it, but as the leading man in this film its like he’s sleeping through it. The predictability is what becomes this film’s greatest deterrent, because even though there were a few bright spots, as it progressed it just got worse and worse. I don’t know how much of this movie will change from the feature that I saw, but in its current form I wouldn’t pay nine bucks for it.
-Sami
Ouch. I know people were up in arms the other day about the idea of remaking this, but come on... the film essentially was a remake to begin with, and how many times has Carpenter himself made a variation on the formula? I don’t think the first ASSAULT is exactly sacred text, as NID DE GUEPES proved. It can be done and done well, but based on this reaction, maybe this remake isn’t the right way precisely.
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