Assault on Precinct 13: Critic Reviews

A blast of cheesy, full throttle fun that didn't have to be made nearly as well as it was to do the job it was meant to do.

Jean-Francois Richet, the director of the new Assault, is working from a script, by James DeMonaco, that creates a handful of zingy one-note lowlifes but that hasn't updated the isolated-precinct premise in a timely or thoughtful way.

Don't avoid the new Assault on Precinct 13 because it's a remake. There are plenty of other reasons.

The film has an appropriately dark and gritty look, but it suffers from some glaring problems.

It's good for a silly laugh, this stuff. And maybe this movie will draw renewed attention to Carpenter's eminently better movie.

Breaks the first and only commandment of remakes: Thou shall at the very least do justice to the original, or thou shall not be made at all.

For one thing, it's silly. For another, it's not always silly enough to be diverting.

A surprisingly credible action flick -- even with Ethan Hawke in the role of a neurotic hipster police sergeant.

Hawke and Fishburne make it work, supported by a mostly strong cast.

Good, gory fun.

A polished B-movie with lots of gunfire, a sheen of craftsmanship and few pretensions to be anything it isn't.

One of the few good things to be said about Assault on Precinct 13 is that, early in the new season, we get one of the year's worst movies over and done with.

Fishburne even manages to make crass violence witty.

Strong performances and a couple of new twists.

The premise may be outlandish, the action unrealistic and sometimes silly and the characters formulaic. But the movie rips and roars.

My preference for the remake over the original has more to do with its harsh representation of contemporary state corruption and its unsentimental ethical distinctions than with its success as a thriller.

A studiously cheesy remake of John Carpenter's 1976 cult fave shoot-'em-up.

Gets a ruthless grip on the audience's throat early and never lets go.

Gleefully filled with corruption, violence, paranoia, thug-speak and mayhem. It's mad, it's bad and it's bloody. Yep, it's a bonafide blast.

Though Richet stretches believability near the end, action-movie fans should assault theaters for an entertaining stay at Precinct 13.

This meat-and-potatoes dish of moviemaking is sufficiently tasty to satisfy auds hungry for old-fashioned rock-the-house action.

A thriller that actually thrills.

Just duck, shoot or be shot, a bloody race to see who can be the last man standing, and maybe manage a wisecrack or two.

You've got to smile at a movie that puts two key female characters in high heels and skimpy dresses and brazenly insists that it makes perfect sense that they be dressed that way for a shootout in the middle of a snowstorm.

A smartly assembled noir package.