Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at a film that I had written off from the beginning. I almost can't believe I went to the screening in the first place as it was a 10am screening at the theater with the smallest screen and worst sound system in town.
I hate mornings, so I wasn't in the best mood to start with. Mornings are just so slow and tedious. I prefer to wake up when the day has already started and I can just jump right into it. But anyway, I was cranky and I thought the trailer for the film showed absolutely nothing promising. Plus I heard some of the changes to the original where kind of stupid and were changed without any real reason.
Then the movie starts and I thought I was a trailer for a different film. It has Ethan Hawke, obviously high on some sort of crazy ADD rant. The projectionist thought it was a trailer, too, because the lights turned up in the theater for about 30 seconds before everyone realized it was the movie we had all gathered to see. It was the start of many surprises for me with this remake.
I'm not a huge fan of DARK STAR... I think it's funny, but really, really amateurish and way too long (you gotta love the killer beach-ball, though). As such, I believe ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 is Carpenter's first great movie. The way he ramps up the tension, how he throws together clashing character types, the completely random nature of the events that lead up to the assault, the balls it takes to shoot that little girl who just wants some ice cream... It's a rough movie and the first inkling that this Carpenter guy might have an idea of what he's doing.
The remake not only does the original justice, it's a fuckin' hardcore, gritty, massively entertaining tough as nails piece of film. Is it 100% perfect? No, but it's so close it doesn't really matter. Ethan Hawke is a flawed, but courageous character. After suffering a drug bust gone wrong (ie the beginning of the film that so surprised me... and the projectionist), he's stuck behind the desk at Precinct 13 and in charge of its closing, after which he'll be put behind a desk at some other precinct.
Also at the precinct are Brian Dennehy, as a retiring old school cop named Jasper, Drea de Matteo as the over-sexed receptionist who has a thing for bad boys... there's also a cop named Capra played by Matt Craven who gets the night off (New Years), so it's really just Dennehy, Hawke and de Matteo who are there when a prison bus is rerouted to their station due to a bad storm.
On this bus is Laurence Fishburne, who gets his first chance to be as badass as he was in the first MATRIX film (since he didn't quite get the same material with the sequels) with the character of Marion Bishop. This guy is tough, quiet and oozes a machismo "You don't want to fuck with me" vibe.
Also on the bus is Ja Rule as Smiley, who loves to speak in the 3rd person. "Smiley thanks you!" hehe Also on the bus is Aisha Hinds, who is accused of being a gang banger, but claims to have never committed a crime in her life. More importantly the bus also carries John Leguizamo. I only say more importantly because Leguizamo, in full SPUN crazy drug addict conspiracy nut mode, is awesome in the movie. He's always funny, but not in a Jar Jar way.
I also can't forget the lovely Maria Bello, who plays Hawke's shrink, assigned to him by the department to deal with the drug bust gone wrong element I told you about earlier. She's fantastic in the movie and goes through a fantastic double arc... She starts off strong, but when the shit hits the fan, she becomes very weak, then grows from that. I really loved her character in the film.
So, the bus is rerouted to Precinct 13 with those badasses aboard and that's when the fun starts.
Now, the changes from the original that I didn't think I'd much like had primarily to do with the people assaulting precinct 13. In the original, it was a gang going after the father of the little girl who got shot by one of the gang members. The father, naturally, goes crazy, grabs a gun and offs one of the big-wigs of the gang before retreating to the only sanctuary he can, the closing precinct 13.
In this film, the assaulters are dirty cops trying to off Bishop (Fishburne) before he gets his day in court and puts the finger on all of them, the top of the heap being Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne). Byrne isn't really wasted, but he's not given much that's as interesting as what's going on inside the precinct.
The great success of the film is really in two main areas: scripting and execution. The character dialogue is fantastic, however there is some iffy exposition at the very beginning. "So, Cap... I have all the computers packed up because we're closing... that means we don't have internet or phones anymore, you know in case we need 'em... because we're closing..." Not that bad, of course, but take that, cut it in half and you have what I'm talking about. But in all honesty, the one or two spotty lines of exposition are so quickly forgotten and replaced by such great characters and character dialogue that it's almost not worth mentioning.
Did I mention this film is hardcore? People you don't expect get killed... harshly... and at points where you don't want to see them go. The film is so fast, so fresh and so gritty that you really can't anticipate exactly what's coming next, or to what extreme.. Honestly, that was my biggest fear that this film was going to softball the chewing nails toughness of the original, but it really does go beyond living up to the original. The remake enhances the original. Give Carpenter a bigger budget, a little more experience and Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin with Fred Williamson and Pam Grier back in the day and I think he would have come up with something like what we get in the remake.
So, from one person who wasn't looking forward to this film at all to all of you... Go see this. It'd be a goddamn shame if ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 gets swallowed up. This is the way to remake a movie. Change it up, throw some interesting character actors in, but keep the same tone of the original. That's one of my problems with the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake. The tone is so radically different than the original film. So much of why DAWN OF THE DEAD was great was just abandoned for some flashy music video editing. They got the character actors right, they got the gore alright, they just forgot to make the characters not played by Ving Rhames interesting in the slightest. The DOTD remake is an easy movie to like, but it's not a pimple on the ass of the original.
Not so with ASSAULT. It's tight, fun and amazingly entertaining. The character economy is top notch, with each character getting just enough time to make them more than just cardboard cut-outs. I, for one, can't wait to see this movie again. The movie opens Wednesday, January 19th. Go see it. Don't look at that bad trailer, don't look at the boring poster... Read what comes in. I'll post any (real) review I get for the movie, good or bad. I can tell you ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 blew my ass out of the water, a John Carpenter purist who really digs the original film. Go, see it. You won't be sorry.
-Quint
