Assault On Precinct 13

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At a time when remakes and other cinema adaptations are legions on the other side of the ocean, it's one of the most cult movie in cinema history's turn to be remade beautiful, the great John Carpenter's "ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13". Directing this predicted wreck, we can find our Frenchy Jean-François Richet, who's already had the idea to work on this monument of cinema since as early as 1997.
Eight years have gone by since the release of his polemical movie "MA 6-T VA CRACK-ER". In between, he only shot a long-running movie in 2001 ("DE L'AMOUR"), and so it's still as a young director that he's going to try and conquer Hollywood with this adaptation. Let's also notice that it's the first time that Jean-François direct a movie without taking part to the writing of the scenario (written here by James DeMonaco).

Due to big Hollywoodian production, the cast had to be excellent, and it is as we can find Ethan Hawke ("TAKING LIVES", "HAMLET", "WELCOME TO GATTACA", "THE SURVIVORS", "DEAD POET SOCIETY"), Ja Rule ("SCARY MOVIE 3, FAST AND FURIOUS"), Maria Bello ("SECRET WINDOW", "PAYBACK", "E.R."), Peter Bryant ("WHITE NOISE", "SCARY MOVIE", "AFTER SHOCK: EARTHQUAKE IN NEW YORK"), Gabriel Byrne ("GHOST SHIP", "SPIDER", "STIGMATA", "ENEMY OF THE STATE", "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK", "USUAL SUSPECT"), Fulvio Cecere ("REPLICANT", "VALENTINE", "HURRICANE CARTER", "BONE COLLECTOR", "DISTURBING BEHAVIOUR"), Kim Coates ("BLACK HAWK DOWN", "PEARL HARBOR", "BATTLE FIELD EARTH", "THE LAST BOY SCOUT"), Drea de Matteo ("SWORDFISH", "THE SOPRANOS"), Laurence Fishburne ("THE MATRIX", "EVENT HORIZON", "NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 3", "APOCALYPSE NOW"), John Leguizamo ("LAND OF THE DEAD", "COLLATERAL DAMAGE", "MOULIN ROUGE!", "DR DOLITTLE, SPAWN", "ROMEO + JULIET", "DIE HARD 2") and Brian Dennehy ("ROMEO + JULIET", "FX2", "COCOON THE RETURN", "FX", "RAMBO"). If all that's not heavy enough...

But everybody knows that big production, big budget and a well-known cast aren't necessarily synonymous of a good movie, theory which is proved with this "ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13", far less good than the previous one from a cinematographic point of view... Indeed, compared to the original, the remake takes on a completely different strategy. Carpenter succeeded in making a mysterious film with an ominous atmosphere (very little dialogues and noises) whereas our national Richet comes out with a US-like action movie, full of gunfight, over-explanation of the story (they really think we know nothing and have no brain in this remake), nymphomaniac in tiny skirts, useless over-present soundtrack, without forgetting some action scenes hardly understandable because of the camera moving all the way round, and that's not all...

In spite of this fundamental difference that made the essence itself of the original, the main plot stays the same: some cops have to team up with gangsters to be able to push back the assault of the attackers.
So it is in the same huit-clos atmosphere that the whole movie takes place, but unfortunately, inversely to Carpenter's, it doesn't fit... However, Ethan Hawke and Lawrence Fishburne (who put his leather coat back on to interpret Bishop in the movie, a little reference to the original in which Bishop was the cop) embody their parts with perfection, and the profusion of bloody effects isn't too unpleasant to me, but something that was in the original is missing ...

However, "ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13" is a good movie with balls but the Carpenter's fans shouldn't watch it...

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