Remake Review: Assault On Precinct 13 (1976/2005)
- May 29, 2017
- 3 min read
A police station is waiting to close. In the hours before shutdown a prison transport arrives unexpectedly. Before long the station is under attack and a siege is underway. The cops are outmanned and outgunned and there's only one place to turn for help, the criminals locked away in the cells. It's a pretty basic concept but give it a couple of decades and see what happens.
In 1976 John Carpenter released what might be the most John Carpenter of all his movies, Assault On Precinct 13. It's violent, action packed and features one of his best scores. But it wasn't exactly a big film and, over the years, faded into obscurity. That is until the Jean-Francois Richet directed remake was unleashed in 2005. While the original was minimal in almost every sense, the remake tells a deeper story, packs in more characters and features some recognisable names like Laurence Fishburne and Ethan Hawke.
The premise for each film is the same but the execution couldn't be dissimilar. Carpenter's original features some pretty standard characters. There's a cut and dry cop, determined to do his job, a condemned man who's accepted his fate, a tough criminal who will do whatever it takes to survive, so on and so forth. The remake tries to force something more into the characters, giving almost all of them colossal flaws, drug addiction, corrupt or just plain psychotic and while it might have worked in a different film, here it does not. The original had you on the side of those defending themselves, purely because of the situation they were in and the people they were against. Richet's attempt failed to have me on either side with the heroes being pretty rubbish people in their own right. As far as the main cast goes, Fishburne and Hawke do a decent job in the remake, though the longer the film goes, the more dull they become. The original has a cast on nobodies and it seems like they're trying their best, which makes there performances more genuine.
Then there are the villains of the piece. In 1976 they were nothing more than a gang intent on taking revenge on a man who slew one of their own, now taking shelter in the police station. There motives are clear enough, as is their ruthless nature, shown off as they gun down a child within the films opening scenes. In 2005 we're instead dealing with corrupt cops, lead by Gabriel Byrne. They're here to kill Fishburne's character before he can testify in court, thus giving them up, despite the fact that Fishburne himself is the man who presumably corrupted them in the first place. While Byrne is certainly a more interesting character to watch and has at least twice as much screen time than the entirety of the gang from the original, it's the cold and calculated rage of an army of delinquents that seems more menacing.
In the end, it is simplicity that outshines complexity, in every regard. From the action to the characters to the plot, Carpenter's original film is still entertaining today. It isn't trying to be some grand police thriller, preferring instead to focus on the intensity of the situation itself, rather than the people within it. It may not be the best movie ever made but it's a far sight better than the boring remake.
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