It’s New Years Eve and a group of police officers are snowed in at Detroit’s defunct Precinct 13, which will close its doors for good at midnight. All is well until a police bus carrying four convicts veers off the road and must camp out at the precinct for the night. And to make matters worse, one of the prisoners was formerly in league with a group of corrupt cops who will stop at nothing to keep him from getting to court.
Such is the setup for “Assault on Precinct 13,” and if the premise sounds familiar, it is likely for one of two reasons. First, the film is a remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 classic of the same title. Otherwise, it probably rings a bell because it’s one of the most recycled action movie setups in existence — a group of good guys get trapped inside a small space and must fight off a group of bad guys who want to get in. Granted, “Assault” mixes up this tired conventions by specifying that the good policemen must work with convicts in order to ward off the crooked cops, but inevitably, their collaboration causes more problems than it solves.
The film is stylishly directed by Jean-Fran