Intense, Nail Biting Action
One should not watch this movie expecting the highly choreographed gunfight ballets that John Woo initiated & every other action movie has followed ever sense. This movie preceded all of that. The plot focuses on a small group of police officers and convicts fighting off a relentless street gang in an all but abandoned precinct. There are two central heroes of this movie: Bishop, a Black Police Chief who is new to the job & looking for a little adventure at the beginning of the film (a superior officer asks him "Do you want to be a hero your first time out?" "Yes, Sir," Bishop replies); and there is Napolean Wilson, a White man on his way to death row when the prison bus he is riding is forced to make a detour (check out this plot twist: another prisoner starts coughing & wheezing, nearly passing out, and guess what, rather than pulling a shiv on the cop who examines him, it turns out the guy is really sick! How often does that happen in a movie?)...
A classic "B' thriller is given a digital face-lift for blu-ray... but is it done right?
The film itself is three-and-a-half stars out of five; taut, eerie, violent, suspenseful and (best of all) fun, this is a fine example of a lo-fi 1970's "B" suspense-action thriller. At it's core, "Assault On Precinct 13" is a 1970's "grindhouse" feature with characters and a premise straight out of Howard Hawks and John Ford westerns. This was "B" film master John Carpenter's second feature (after the ultra-low budget amateurish sci-fi spoof "Dark Star"), and his terrific skill with suspense and atmosphere really became evident with this film; his use of lighting, shadows and darkness in the film are textbook examples of how to make a "B" suspense flick on the cheap. The music, another classic (albeit corny) John Carpenter synth score, also contributes considerably to the film's "B" movie goodness.
On the other hand, his handling of action sequences are merely workmanlike and competent, and for all the great (and not so great) films Carpenter would later go on to direct,...
They really don't make 'em like this anymore
Before there was Halloween, there was Assault on Precinct 13, John Carpenter's second movie and arguably his first masterpiece. Fans of his later work should be warned though, there's no traditional horror or supernatural elements here, just one of history's all-time great low-budget action movies. By now the plot should be familiar to just about anyone reading this review: a lone cop and a couple of lifers have to defend a virtually abandoned police station against a street gang's onslaught. However, it's what Carpenter does with this concept that makes Assault on Precinct 13 such an exciting and memorable watch. It's a brilliantly executed pressure-cooker of a movie, thrusting a few decidedly disparate people into an unimaginably dire situation and letting us watch them as they try to figure out what to do about it. Although Carpenter has made much of the influence of classic westerns on this movie (Rio Bravo in particular), there are also ample doses of the eerie minimalism...
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