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| Assault on Precinct 13 |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 91 m |
| Public Rating: 9.81 (31 votes) |
Director: John Carpenter |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Suspense/Thriller |
Year: 1976 |
| Writer(s): John Carpenter |
| Distributor: Image Entertainment |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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I read somewhere that this was Carpenter's adaptation of the Howard Hawks/John Wayne epic "Rio Bravo." That provided me with plenty of laughs as I imagined John Wayne's reaction to the costumes and haircuts of the gang members in this film.
I was pleasantly surprised at the genuine tension that Carpenter was able to draw from this somewhat hokey premise. A police precinct in L.A. is closing and being relocated to a better neighborhood. The local gangs, including token members of every minority rights group that scared the hell out of white folks in the 70s, are upset at the gangland-style murders of several gang members by the police. I am serious: there is a Black Panther, a Che Guevara-like Hispanic man in a beret, a Russell Means clone for the Native Americans, and a white guy with stringy hair--maybe he was supposed to represent the Weather Underground or something. Anyway, they are the leaders of their respective gangs, and they take a blood oath to kill a bunch of cops or die in the attempt.
Add to the mix a prison van loaded with dangerous criminals that has to stop at the precinct because of a sick prisoner, and you have quite a cocktail. A Molotov cocktail, to be exact.
There were several really good and tense setpieces in the film. One particularly good one involved a man buying ice cream for his daughter. A car filled with hooligans keeps driving past, slowly, with the cheesy 1974-issue tension-building music (composed by Carpenter) thrumming in the background. I won't give away what happens, but it was actually shocking and somewhat poignant. Another scene, possibly the best in the film, has the survivors, holed up in the precinct house, drawing straws to see who has to crawl through a sewer and escape in a waiting patrol car.
There was good chemistry between all the cast members and, despite the bad costumes, the sight of the gang members attacking the building, coming in endless waves, was creepy. It reminded me a lot of "Night of the Living Dead," which probably was not an accident. Overall, it was a good late-night movie, tense enough to keep you looking over your shoulder but corny enough to provide fodder for endless jokes.
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