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As I was buying my ticket for
my latest review, a couple of guys—one of whom was hitting
on the ticket girl—wondered aloud why I might be at a
movie by myself. One guy made the leap of logic that I might
be a movie critic. The other guessed I was a total loser.
Unfortunately, both are true.
After I assured them I am a "crappy" movie critic,
they asked me what movie I was there to see. I told him “Assault
on Precinct 13.” In a very urban, very skilled crescendo,
his friend said, “Yo G! That movie fucking suuuucks!”
Well, of course it does, that’s why I was there. I also
reviewed "Superbabies:Baby Geniuses Part II" by
the way.
So here it is: Ethan Hawk plays cop Jake Roenick, who, because
of a botched drug sting where two fellow officers were killed,
now sits behind a desk waiting for his courage to return.
While waiting, he drinks a lot of whiskey and takes a lot
of pills. Sometimes he eats donuts. The final day that the
nearly defunct precinct 13 building is open, Roenick is in
charge until sunrise. On New Year’s Eve. To make matters
worse, there's a damn a blizzard rages outside.
Stuck in the building with two other people—the old
cantankerous, curmudgeon cop, played by, you guessed it, Brian
Dennehy, and a fantastically slutty secretary (Drea de Matteo)—Roenick
is resolved to get through the evening without any hassles.
In a superfluous and horridly banal announcement, Jasper says
he’s retiring. It really never came up again in the movie,
but I had to watch it, so you have to read it.
Obviously being a formulaic action film, we need an antagonist.
Insert, notorious gangster Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne)
who, after being arrested for killing a cop, his prison transport
bus is forced to stop at precinct 13 because the blizzard
is just too damn dangerous. With Fishburne on the bus are
an assortment of lovable rapscallion felons: played by John
Leguizamo, Ja Rule, and a black chick who wasn’t even
listed in the movie credits.
As it turns out, Bishop was in cahoots with a cop Marcus Duvall
(Gabriel Byrne). If Bishop makes it to trial, then Duvall
and his men will be in jail for the rest of their lives. Hence,
the “Assault on Precinct 13.” From there on out,
explosions happen, people get shot, yadda, yadda, yadda.
This is a fairly sucky movie with a somewhat talented cast.
Sure, Ethan Hawke needs to stay current on his alimony payments;
Laurence Fishburne couldn’t resist the opportunity to
star in a movie with JA Rule; Drea de Matteo is on “Joey”
so anything is a step up; John Leguizamo is still living down
“Super Mario Brothers,” and Brian Dennehy is...
old. Apparently, playing aging cops/fireman and heart attack
victims never gets old.
To be fair, the movie didn’t totally suck. It
was just stupidly unrealistic like all action films. Did I
mention a helicopter flies in to finish the assault? A fucking
helicopter. Oh yeah, and the movie is set in the woods…of
Detroit. While I might be willing to admit that no one in
Detroit “Rock City” would so much as flinch at the
sound of semiautomatic gunshots, I must take exception to
placing a forest in the middle of a major metropolitan area.
Then again, the only way this movie could have been less realistic
is if Santa Claus and the Easter bunny were held up at precinct
13. And they were being attacked by the Legion of Doom.
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Above:
Movie posters are cool. I wish I was on a movie poster.
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