Synopsis
L.A.'s deadliest street gang just declared war on the cops.
The lone inhabitants of an abandoned police station are under attack by the overwhelming numbers of a seemingly unstoppable street gang.
1976 Directed by John Carpenter
The lone inhabitants of an abandoned police station are under attack by the overwhelming numbers of a seemingly unstoppable street gang.
Austin Stoker Darwin Joston Laurie Zimmer Martin West Tony Burton Charles Cyphers Nancy Kyes Peter Bruni John J. Fox Marc Ross Alan Koss Henry Brandon Kim Richards Frank Doubleday Gilbert De la Pena Peter Frankland Al Nakauchi Gilman Rankin Cliff Battuello Horace Johnson Valentine Villareal Kenny Miyamoto Jerry Viramontes Len Whitaker Kris Young Randy Moore Warren Bradley III Joe Woo Jr. Bill Taylor Show All…
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An interracial gang wages an all-out assault on a police station. In their way is a street smart cop, a hottie with a nice rack, and a con who really wants a smoke. A blood-oath. An ice cream truck. A Real Housewife of Beverly Hills's last scoop of vanilla. A father's swift justice with a twist. Being marked for death by Che and the gang. A dispatcher's last call. A save-ass plan. A game of hot potato seals Snow White's fate. Backseat peek-a-boo. Having to wing it. Not arguing with a confident man. The ultimate last stand. Wilson finally gets that smoke. Carpenter's Mona Lisa.
88/100
Carpenter's fascination with group adventures and siege movies has fed through his entire filmography - culminating in the vastly underrated Ghosts of Mars - but Assault on Precinct 13 is the original Hawksian blueprint distilled and revamped. It's a credit to Carpenter and the cast and crew involved that the entire experience feels effortless in spite of how meticulous the construction is. There's incredible character work, a defined time and place (Carpenter's score helps considerably), dedicated moments of tension, explosive set-pieces of violence and horror; and it's all in the course of 90 fucking minutes. Truly spellbinding exploitation, transforming human faces into modern zombies and introducing wave after wave within stark widescreen frames. Can't wait to make a double feature with this and Green Room, if only to observe the influential power of Carpenter's work to this very day.
Every time I see this I get more convinced that there's never been anything as cinematic as those pieces of paper getting hit in the first attack. A masterpiece of spare down understatement. A very elaborate thrill machine that is pitched as low key as possible and it is more devasting because of it. The only real mistep is the occasional cut for the patrol cops. Many filmmakers have tried a urban western, but Carpenter not only one of the few to really find ideal analogues, but his sense of stylization matches not only Hawks, but the genre's essential simplicity. It is also the key film on Carpenter career long Hawksian obsession not because it lifts the plot of Rio Bravo and a few other motifs, but because it turns Hawks dedication to the idea of men of work stoic accepting death and pushes it towards pure horror.
Carpenter stripped down to the bare essentials; as with his other films there is a silent, menacing, otherworldly force who stops at nothing to eradicate the human survivors, except here the antagonists are people too whose disquietingly inhuman behavior is makes them so terrifying and the setting is located in the middle of suburbia whose thin population makes for unnerving isolation and means they may as well be located in the dead of space. The everyday turned into the alien, cosmic horror without any of the practical effects and prosthesis, Assault on Precinct 13 is an assault on humanity but this time in the guise of other humans.
America at war with itself. Police officers massacre civilians in a poverty-stricken ghetto; juvenile gangsters slaughter an innocent child who just wanted a different flavor of ice cream; and at the center of it all, an act of pure altruism, a crew of misfits who come together and sacrifice themselves to protect a man they don’t even know, strangers defending a stranger. As in The Thing, trust is a hard thing to come by these days, but if we can find it, if we can muster the courage to throw the convicted felon a shotgun, we can be heroes, even if only just for one day.
John Carpenter | Non-Western Westerns
Removed from My Pre-Letterboxd Era