Review – Assault on Precinct 13

This is some of John Carpenter’s earlier work as a director, and one of his few forays outside the realms of horror and/or science fiction. The plot here is a simple bit of business about a police station running on a skeleton crew suddenly besieged by a gang of fanatical gang members. The whys and hows of the whole thing would take too long to explain in full. For here, suffice it to say that a couple of cops and a couple of cons from the holding cells must hold off the urban marauders until help arrives. And that’s the bulk of the drama. Some of the action sequences are sort of fun, but otherwise this is a less-than-compelling bit of cinema. Oh, and advance warning: early on the gang leader ruthlessly executes a kid (motiveless but nonetheless integral to the plot, so you can decide for yourself whether or not it was really a good decision to include it). Mildly amusing