Assault On Precinct 13: Widescreen DVD Review

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Title: Assault On Precinct 13: Widescreen

Region: One

Genre: Action Thriller

Stars: Ethan Hawke, Lawrence Fishburne, John Leguizamo, Maria Bello, Ja Rule, Drea De Matteo, Brian Denehy, Gabriele Byrne

Writer: James Demonaco

Based On The Film Written By: John Carpenter

Director: Jean-Francois Richet

Feature length: 109 minutes

Extras: Filmmaker’s Commentary, Featurettes, Deleted Scenes, Previews

Languages: English DTS Digital 5.1 Theatrical Surround Sound and English and French Language Dubbed Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Subtitles: English Captions and French and Spanish Language Subtitles

Packaging: Keep Case

Chapter Stops: 20

Sound: DTS Digital 5.1 Theatrical Surround Sound and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Year of Theatrical Release: 2005/DVD Release: 2005

Theatrical Distributor: Rogue Pictures

Home Video Distributor: Universal Studios Home Entertainment

MPAA Rating: R

Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera

The original “Assault Precinct 13” was John Carpenter’s second theatrical feature film and while the film was not the huge commercial success Carpenter would be later associated with, he would follow it with the original “Halloween” and as a result become one of the most prolific genre filmmakers of the 1980s. Looking back at “Assault On Precinct 13” once could see much of Carpenter’s trademark style including the cool synthesizer soundtrack and his particular method of choreographing scenes where characters meet the their demise. I have noticed that in a John Carpenter film when a character dies, he or she usually just drops dead. There is no drawn out agony to it. Unless the character is supernatural in some way, they just drop. The original “Assault On Precinct 13” was somewhat prophetic in how mob violence can escalate in an area where even law enforcement is condemning one of it’s own – in this case it is an old precinct. Carpenter was inspired by “Rio Bravo” and George Romero’s “Night Of The Living Dead” also inspired him. The original film was set in Los Angeles and had a group of law enforcement and inmates defend themselves against an army of gang members out for revenge against the police because a group had been ambushed and slaughtered by law enforcement a night before. The criminals would come at the precinct with almost no regard for their own well being and the obvious parallels between a group of people isolated and trapped while defending themselves against a seemingly inhuman force is what made the original so thrilling and comparable to Romero’s classic zombie horror film.

This 2005 remake takes the basic premise and resets it to a precinct in Detroit surrounded by woods where a group of dirty cops armed with sophisticated weaponry attempt to kill a gangster kingpin (Lawrence Fishburne), who can finger them in court. Ethan Hawke is the Sergeant haunted by an undercover drug bust that went wrong months earlier and now must overcome his self doubt to be the leader he once was and organize and protect the group of cops and cons inside in order to survive the night. The first twenty minutes or so of this remake are quite engaging, but then the movie just starts to get increasingly ridiculous as time goes on. It seems to me that in every movie he has appeared in, Lawrence Fishburne is playing another variation of his “Morpheus” character from “The Matrix.” Here he might as well be called “Gangster Morpheus.” I like Fishburne, but why does he always have to adapt this “Mr. Cool” persona? He has a lot more range than that. Drea De Matteo seems wasted here too and she is not nearly as sexy as her female co-star Maria Bello, who plays a police department psychotherapist. John Leguizamo is likeable, but for the most part just about everyone in this movie is fodder for the dirty cops trying to break in. These officers are so well equipped it is hard to believe they could not take down that precinct and all inside with ease. The minute I saw the helicopter flying overhead, any suspension of disbelief I had was gone.

This may be a popcorn film, but good popcorn films attempt to follow some sort of logic to keep one engaged no matter how unbelievable it gets. If they have all of this high tech stuff and can somehow even get a chopper without anyone being the wiser to attack a police precinct, why not just blow the whole damn precinct up and be done with it? It certainly would be a lot faster and they probably would get away before anyone else got there or why not just stick around and pretend they were alerted to a threat on the Kingpin’s life and got there too late. Either way they could blame it on a rival mobster or something. I mean for cops on the take, they certainly seem pretty dumb at times. While different than the original, this remake just doesn’t have the same cohesive sense of impending doom intermixed with action that made Carpenter’s film so thrilling and a later cult success. Much of the action is also very predictable and if you’ve seen the original, it’s even more so.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s DVD edition presents “Assault On Precinct 13” in an anamorphic widescreen (2.40:1) aspect ratio that preserves the monochromatic style of the film quite nicely with no compression artifacts to note. The English DTS Digital 5.1 Theatrical Surround Soundtrack is very aggressive and will make the floor rumble in your living room if you have powerful speakers. A well-mixed English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack as well as a French Language Dubbed Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack is encoded onto the dual layered DVD as options along with English Captions for the hearing impaired and French and Spanish Language Subtitles. There is also a feature length audio commentary track with Director Jean-Francois Richet, Screenwriter James Demonaco, and Producer Jeffrey Silver. They explain their reasoning for the changes in the remake including the high tech armaments the bad cops use as well as their respect for Carpenter’s original, but after awhile it gets a bit tiresome and somewhat boring. Richet also provides optional audio commentary for a reel of five letterboxed deleted scenes (6:11).

There are a few featurettes among the extra value materials too that include a look at the weapons used for the film in “Armed And Dangerous” (4:55), a production design featurette entitled “Behind Precinct Walls” (7:29), a look at the stunt work in “Plan Of Attack” (4:27), a featurette on the Director and filmmakers entitled “The Assault Team” (5:17) and an EPK with the Actors entitled “Caught In The Crossfire” (12:34). Preview trailers that include “Unleashed”, “White Noise”, and “Seed Of Chucky” (3:31) appear before the opening animated main DVD menu. The subsequent menus are standard interactive still frames with soundtrack background music playing and all are easy to navigate.

“Assault On Precinct 13: Widescreen” is available on DVD-Video now at retailers on and offline courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

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