.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

There is probably no place I would feel safer when all hell is breaking loose with the outside world than inside a police station.

If ever I found the misfortune to be innocently amongst a rash of gunfire, there is probably no place I would rather be than inside a police station. That is until I saw Assault of Precinct 13.

A superior remake of the 1970's John Carpenter budget challenged flick of the same name, this slick update stars Ethan Hawke (Training Day) as police officer Jake Roenick who is responsible for a group of prisoners that are diverted to the station during a New Year's Eve snowstorm.

But things on this night will be anything but routine. Precinct 13 was in its final hours of operation and equipment and staff have already been relocated to the new modernized Precinct 21. And as the winter storm rages outside, so too does a mob of aggressive killer cops that look to silence mobster Marion Bishop (Fishburne) who just happens to be one of the transferred prisoners. This desperate survival situation forces the criminals and the police inside the station to bond together to fight the bigger threat while we get to sit back with our popcorn watching the bullets and bodies fly.

I wasn't a fan of the original and upon a recent revisit, I liked it even less. When stacked up against Carpenters work around the same time (Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York ), this was without question the weakest of the bunch. So when I heard that there was a remake in the offing coming in 2005, I wondered aloud whether it was going to be a Flight of the Phoenix or a Manchurian Candidate. Ends up it falls somewhere in the middle.

The problems with Precinct 13 are numerous. For one, the premise is an 'it can only come from Hollywood ' proposition and there is a little too much we are expected to give allowances for. Next are the secondary characters that are each so unique and eccentric in their traits that it seems too forced. We have the cop about to retire, the gangster, the comic relief, the girl who shouldn't be there, the nymphomaniac. It felt as if director Jean-François Richet just read the action film playbook and made sure he had everything checked off. This wouldn't be so bad if the characters were in any way interesting, but instead they all come across as cardboard cutouts at a shooting range. Maria Bello (Coyote Ugly) and Drea de Matteo (The Soprano's) in particular give us women characters that are included only to get females in the action and really don't provide any substance to the already weak storyline.

But for all the weak points, things weren't that bad. The movie had a pace that most action films could only hope for and some of the action sequences were fun to watch (for instance, the scene of the red lasers shining through the windows or when the two women try to escape in the hotwired truck). I also find no fault in the two leads (Fishburne and Hawke). Both Academy Award nominated actors knew exactly what they were getting into and deliver their lines with enough gusto to keep us interested.

At the conclusion on the viewing, I sat on the fence not knowing whether I was going to give it a small recommendation or a just miss. I opted for the just miss. Although I enjoyed the fact that I hadn't seen this many bullets thrown into a police station since Arnie took his arsenal into the cop shop in The Terminator, I still couldn't get into the film like an action film requires. I didn't care who survived or who didn't and the villains just didn't seem that villainy to me. Not only were they not an evil presence, but I came up with countless ideas on how to infiltrate the precinct that seemed to be lost on the larger numbered imposing force. This lack of ingenuity on behalf of the bad guys had me look at my watch twice during the screening and for that, I have to pass on a recommendation.