So, here I was, going through HBO Max’s “leaving soon” section to find a movie to watch, most likely from my watchlist, when I found something I didn’t realize was on the service, namely John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. I wasn’t looking for it. I didn’t know it was there. But it sounded like a lot more fun than, I dunno, On Golden Pond. I mean, I am almost certainly going to get to On Golden Pond before the end of the month. But really, I wasn’t going to skip a John Carpenter movie if I found one.
Besides, it’s a good sort of movie to check out on a weeknight when I have to go to work the next day.
A street gang managed to steel a load of military-caliber weapons, and while the LAPD managed to kill six in an ambush, the gang’s silent, multi-ethnic leaders swear a blood oath to rain war on both the cops and the city of Los Angeles itself. Cut to the next day and newly promoted cop Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) has been put in charge of decommissioning an old precinct house. During the course of the evening, a prison bus with three prisoners stops there to try and call a doctor when one prisoner appears sick. By then, the gang has made its first two kills (the first being one of those characters coded as the most innocent person possible), and a man grieving one of the victims has managed to kill one of the gang leaders before running to the precinct house and slipping into some sort of catatonic state. The gang, with a lot of its members, soon shows up, cuts the phones and the power, and manages to kill a uniformed cop, all the cops with the prison bus, one of the three prisoners, and eventually one of the secretaries working inside. All that’s left is Bishop, one secretary (Laurie Zimmer), and two prisoners, one of whom (Darwin Joston) was on his way to be executed anyway. The survivors will need to work together to survive long enough for the LAPD to figure out what’s going on and send help.
I really liked this. It was tense, exciting, and smart in its own way. The gang doesn’t really talk, instead just appearing as a never ending wave of nameless assailants. Inside, there’s a lot of terse dialogue as the survivors all show some sort of toughness and ingenuity. Death row inmate Wilson seems to have something approaching a romance with surviving secretary Leigh, though the two never really so much as kiss. Likewise, Wilson and Bishop actually get along as two men who seem proud to help each other out given the situation. There’s a lot of manly man sort of talk here, even with Leigh, and it works.
In fact, the best way to understand the movie seemed to be to see it as a Western of sorts, perhaps of the Howard Hawks variety, and a bit of George Romero zombie flick. The gang just wants to see everyone dead. They get mowed down in waves and they don’t care how many of them die to do whatever it is they’re trying to do. The gang does use some tactical skills that suggest a more invading army sort of action, but they also just run up and get shot. The protagonists are less in danger of their tactics than they are running out of ammo.
In the end, the heroes need to just outsmart the bad guys, and their plans only work but so well. It’s brains vs numbers, and with Carpenter’s direction and score, it’s a tense action movie that showcases the director’s talents in a fun way. Is it a genius piece of cinema? Not by a long shot, but it’s the sort of movie I can dig on a weeknight showing.
Grade: A
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