Review of Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) by Nick C — 14 May 2008

The 1976 original by John Carpenter ranks high on my amorphous list of favourite films so, naturally, it was remade by a bunch of hamfisted mediocrities. The film concerns a small precinct station soon to be shut down, manned by a skeleton crew who have taken charge of a busfull of prisoners, that comes under attack by a mysterious and mysteriously well-armed gang.

In the original, the attackers are only glimpsed as shadowy figures whose motives are unclear and who disappear into the early dawn as mysteriously as they appeared. In this film, the attackers are cops attacking and killing their fellow cops! That's the kind of low-rent cynicism that's become the coin of the realm in modern action pictures.

Even in the post-Watergate paranoia of 1976 did no such ridiculousness occur to Carpenter. I give this film a hearty "Bah!".