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Assault On Precinct 13
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Love it or hate it?
Review date: 2008-03-26 Rating: 8 out of 10
This is one of those movies that divides opinion. See the mixed reviews below for evidence of this. For me it isn't quite a four star film, but its nearer to that than 3 stars. Effectively its a remake of Rio Bravo, restaged in contemporary Los Angeles. For those not familiar with Rio Bravo, a Sheriff and some friends are holed up in his office fighting off an attacking gang.
I can see why some people have criticised it heavily. Some of the acting is really awful and nothing can ever hide that. However in its favour is the fact that its directed by John Carpenter at a time when he only made good and sometimes all-time classic movies (Halloween followed this two years later). The pacing, camera-work and action are all first class. Carpenter also contributed the original music. This is one of his very best pieces of music, very sinister, and I'm sure that it contributes a lot to the overall atmosphere of the film.
My view is that its a flawed cult classic, that you'll either love or hate. The fact that they bothered to remake it three years ago indicates that it must have had some good qualities. Watch it and find out!
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Reviews
"Can't argue with a confident man."
Review date: 2007-12-15 Rating: 8 out of 10
"Driven by random violence, chance and fate" as Carpenter put it on the commentary track that ISN'Ton this new 'special edition' but can be found on the US and German releases, it's easy to see his breakthrough feature (in the UK at least: it tanked Stateside) as a reaction against the cynicism of both the times ("There are no heroes anymore, only men who follow orders," says a voice over Austin Stoker's police radio) and its style of film-making. Carpenter's films often take place in a wasteland or an abandoned environment - Escape From New York, The Thing, They Live - but that is more of a narrative device to highlight his characters' self-reliance and increase the odds against them than a springboard for social criticism.
Always at his best with a low budget that forced him to rely on his intuitive sense of the cinematic to overcome, Carpenter in his prime was a visceral director with a knack for updating classic genres with wit, imagination and style (not to be confused with the modern equivalent, which had more to do with slick cinematography and snappy editing). Here he gives all the trimmings of urban paranoia, particularly potent in a decade (the seventies) increasingly aware of growing alienation from and loss of community, with an old-fashioned tale of reluctant heroes doing what they've got to do complete with macho Hawksian dialogue and a classical film-making style.
Sure, it's Rio Bravo set in seventies LA (the working title was The Anderson Alamo) boasting possibly the first politically correct urban villains in the shape of its inter-racial gang who take on a half-shutdown police station, but that's no bad thing when half of Hollywood was imitating Serpico or The Exorcist (remember when William Friedkin was the most influential and emulated director in the business?).
Austin Stoker gives the film a sense of gravity with his soft-spoken authority as the cop on his first night out, Laurie Zimmer does a good Lauren Bacall that could have been even better if Carpenter had been able to shoot a few more set-ups and have a bit more latitude in the editing, but the undisputed star of the show is Darwin Joston's Napoleon Wilson. A Hawksian hero in the Mitchum mold, he doesn't have as much dialogue as the other players, but what he has is choice ("He fell over," says a prison warder after kicking him out of his stool. "Yeah, I don't sit down as well as I used to."). His personality dominates the movie so much that you wonder why, a brief cameo as 'Dr Phibes' in The Fog aside, he never went on to better things.
Pitched as a blaxploitation flick in the US to miserable box-office but a surprise smash hit in the UK (enough so to drum up the budget for Halloween), a few former aficionados of the film have expressed disillusionment with it after seeing the widescreen DVD, and it's possible to see why. Oddly enough, the Scope frame probably slows it down on the small screen since the panning and scanning cuts from one side to the other on TV broadcasts break up the long takes and create a different rhythm and pace. Of course, it doesn't help that of the plentiful extras on the US release (an occassionally illuminating audio commentary, isolated score, Q&A session), only the trailer and a photo gallery are included on Contender's disc. Still, at least it's a 2.35:1 widescreen transfer this time. The feature itself probably looks better than it did on its first release - after a decade-and-a-half of dupey prints, it's quite a shock to see a sharp print.
If you can remember that brief moment when Carpenter was the most interesting new director on the block - it was no coincidence that he shared magazine covers with Steven Spielberg back in 1978 - chances are you'll still find much to enjoy in this archetypal late-night movie. Maybe fond memory patches up some of the film's rough spots, but hey, isn't that what nostalgia's for?
SUSPENSEFUL
Review date: 2007-08-30 Rating: 8 out of 10
Set in gang-riddled Los Angeles in the 1970s, director John Carpenter was inspired to make a film that was basically a combination of Rio Bravo (1959) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) with rookie cop Ethan Bishop in John Wayne's Rio Bravo role/Duane Jones' Ben, a recently vacated police precinct as the small town jail/farmhouse, and with gang members in place of Night of the Living Dead's zombies/Nathan Burdette's men.
For some viewers, that premise alone may be enough for them to not be able to grant this film a 10, but Assault on Precinct 13 is yet another example of why quality isn't correlated to having unprecedented ideas.
One of the first striking things about Assault on Precinct 13 is that it looks beautiful. It was made on a relatively low budget, and it looks like a large percentage of the money must have gone into camera rental, film stock and film processing. Douglas Knapp's color cinematography is crisp, innovative (I just love the shot with the camera mounted in front of the car headlight, with the sunset in the background) and marvelously portrays Los Angeles as a gritty, suburban wasteland as well, if not better, than any other film I can think of. What makes it effective isn't over-the-top, run down buildings and heavily populated streets, but vast, wide-open spaces, with squat, nondescript houses and buildings, all fading into nothingness. Knapp even manages to make the streets look like this, and a couple scenes are set in what is effectively a sand-logged desert, with a lonely, dangerous phone booth sitting in isolation. The police station also reflects the suburban wasteland look in terms of its spaces and their relationship to each other, its sparseness and its colors.
The low budget nature of the film forced a very successful straightforward, brutal and realistic approach to the action, especially the violence. Carpenter, on his commentary track on the DVD, notes that some scenes weren't as he would have liked because they didn't have the coverage they needed, and had to let them play out, longer than normal, from a single angle. Thank the heavens for a lack of time and funding! Despite the over-the-top mayhem in subsequent action films by other directors, the impact of many of the scenes in this film cannot be topped, and it's often because of the unusual, almost documentary-like feel of the film.
Also adding to the effect is Carpenter's score. Although it's technically primitive, it's just as good as any of his other music, and Carpenter is as talented as a film composer as he is as a director. His use of motifs, often in an almost trance-like repetition, is similar too, and just as effective as, both Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone.
The performances are all excellent, and the staging is even better. If you know anything about the premise of the film before you begin watching it for the first time, you may have difficulty figuring out how they're going to pull off the central situation of the film. The logistics seem to be against creating a prolonged tense situation. Carpenter and company create the perfect scenario with just a couple ingenious moves, and the unending threat, combined with the unusual pacing of the zombie-like menace make Assault on Precinct 13 as frightening as any horror film could be
Quick Reviews!
Review date: 2006-07-25 Rating: 10 out of 10
Carpenter's revamp and resurrection of Rio Bravo and Night of the Living Dead is undoubtedly one of the best films of the last 30 years, and unfortunately one of the most overlooked. With the recent remake, (still haven't seen) hopefully more people will see this and recognise it as a modern classic. Low budget, unknown actors, tense, shocking and exciting, witty dialogue, shady characters, Assault is everything you would expect from a classic Carpenter film.
A group of criminals are being transported to another prison by armoured truck when one of them becomes seriously ill. They decide to stop at the local Police Station to lock up the prisoners and see if they can help the man. However, the Station they stop at is closing down and there is only one cop and a couple of secretaries inside. The prisoners are locked up, including Napolean Wilson- a notorious murderer, while the cops decide what to do. The power has been cut off, but people will be coming in the morning to finally close the place. Night has just fallen. Meanwhile a man in a frantic state runs into the station but won't say what has happened, falling into a comatose state. The Station suddenly comes under attack, and looking outside it seems that hundreds of gang members with guns have started a war with the those inside. With no help and only a few weapons, the survivors- cop, criminals, secretaries must work together to stay alive, and perhaps try to find a way out.
The two male leads of Stoker as the cop, and Joston as Napolean are both brilliant in the roles, unknown faces adding the the sense of uncertainty. Joston delivers his few lines with cool and even though he is a bad guy, he naturally becomes our favourite character. Stoker tries to hold everything together as the law, but realises this will not work. Zimmer is also strong as Leigh, delivering her lines almost passively or vacantly, almost as if she isn't there, but we sense the chemistry between her and Napolean. Burton, West, Cyphers and Loomis also do well in smaller parts, and all the cast deserved to go on to bigger parts. Carpenter creates massive tension again, the faceless enemy always outside, innumerable and even though there are cars going past and houses nearby, the gang is silent and deadly in their pursuit, ensuring that help will come. The guns with silencers are used to good effect, with papers spurting up into the air quietly meaning the cops sometimes do not even know they are being shot at.
The dialogue is minimal, every character has little to say as they all seem annoyed with each other, having to work together, dealing with the situation with no time for pointless chatter which fills other movies. The lighting adds to the tone, everything is shaded, we can only catch glimpses of the gang outside and in, and the score by Carpenter is another modern classic along with his Halloween theme. The deaths are both quiet and shocking- we don't see what happens to Loomis, while the ice cream van part would have taken great bravery to even dream of filming- there hasn't really been anything like it since. Once again Carpenter makes a brilliant film, and while he would soon go on to make bigger box-office smashes, this one stands on its own as the benchmark of low-budget film-making. Many directors try to create tension and fear throughout their careers, Carpenter could do it seemingly without effort.
Unfortunately for such an important film, the extras are awful. This deserves a commentary and interviews with cast and crew. It's unlikely we'll get a better version though, and as it is such a good film you just get it regardless.
B Movies at their best!
Review date: 2005-07-14 Rating: 10 out of 10
Low budget US 70's B movie. Bad acting, sparse dialogue, laughable action sequences.
BUT... this film certainly has something about it. The plot, perhaps predictable, actually works. The atmosphere, especially the built up, is great - particularly helped by a suberbly brooding (and frankly well ahead of its time) soundtrack.
Recommended!
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Charles Cyphers
Darwin Joston
Laurie Zimmer
Austin Stoker
Creators:
Austin Stoker (Primary Contributor)
Darwin Joston (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Contender Entertainment Group
Manufacturer: Contender Entertainment Group
EAN: 5030305510619
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Special Edition, Widescreen,
Release date: 2005-01-17
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 87 minutes
Language: English (Original Language)