Product Details

• Actors: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Drea De Matteo, Brian Dennehy, John Leguizamo
• Directors: Jean-Francois Richet
• Writers: James DeMonaco
• Producers: Pascal Caucheteux, Stephane Sperry, Jeffrey Silver
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed: French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: May 10, 2005
• Run Time: 109 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (130 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0007W7I4W
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,776 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Assault on Precinct 13 (Widescreen Edition)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Action buffs will have a fine time with the spray of bullets, shattering glass, and pyrotechnic silliness that makes up the bulk of Assault on Precinct 13. Updated from the little-known cops-and-robbers classic John Carpenter made in 1976 (two years before he made his name with Halloween), this high-concept thriller is mostly a lowbrow kill-fest, and is very happy with itself for being so efficient in both categories. A decrepit police station on its last night before retirement--New Year's Eve, no less--plays unexpected home to a gang of criminals who become snowbound in the basement lockup. Another mysterious gang of people who stealthily gather in the blizzard outside want one of the particularly nasty criminals (Laurence Fishburne) dead, and they'll take the rest of the precinct down too, by golly. The odd lot of characters trapped inside include a burned-out sergeant (Ethan Hawke), a sexpot secretary (post-Sopranos Drea de Matteo), an even sexier police psychologist (Maria Bello), and various other good guys and bad guys who variously go down in blazes of guts, glory, bullets, and fire. Hawke and Fishburne are opposite sides of the coin: the law, and the bathroom scale. Their need to partner in order to survive the guns outside is the movie's moral conflict, and both actors chew on Precinct 13's peeling walls and scuffed floors to drive the point home every chance they get. Obvious filmmaking fakery abounds in everything from the irksome snowstorm, frequent gunshots to the head, and a shadowy forest that conveniently presents itself in an industrial section of Detroit for the climactic showdown. No matter, this Assault is for non-thinkers who want blood and gunpowder, with no messy slowdowns for logic, please.--Ted Fry

Product Description

Laurence Fishburne, Ethan Hawke, Ja Rule, John Leguizamo. A police station is attacked by a busload of escaped convicts-and the criminals and cops on the inside must work together to survive, even though they play by different rules. Directed by Jean-Francois Richet. 2005/color/109 min/R.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars But, there was so much potential! June 21, 2005

By Rob

Format:DVD

I'll cut to the chase. It's a decent flick with a few really kick a$$ scenes that COULD have been MUCH better, but as it is, it's only barely worth a rental. Certainly its not worth a purchase. Why? Read on.

1. Apparently, many people in the flick are AMAZING shots. During the flick, not less than people get killed with perfect headshots ranging in distances from 150+ feet away to point-blank range. Every one winds up with their eyes wide open and a neat little hole in their head (even when some of the ammunition used would have made their heads explode like melons if they took a shot like that). From .50 cals to .9mm, it doesn't matter.

2. Alternatively, the same people who get amazing headshots in once scene are the same people who couldn't hit the side of a barn with a shotgun in the next scene. In one part, there are four people, standing perfectly still firing full automatics at one another from a distance of about 12 feet, and not only does no one get killed, no one even takes a hit! What?

3. Lawrence Fishburne is essentially Morpheus again. As soon as he started talking I was like "you gotta be kidding me, right?" Same "cool" mannerisms, same tone of voice, same inflections, same quasi-religious comments, its almost comical. I was wondering when he was going to start talking about Neo.

4. Speaking of which, its interesting that apparently Mr. Fishburnes character is this incredibly powerful gangster, yet no one from his organization seems to care when he's arrested, taken into custody, or anything. For such a dangerous man, he certainly seems to have to deal with the situation completely on his own. There isn't even a hint that anyone from his gang cares at all that he's been taken away.

5. There is one scene where the bad guys flood the building with laser scopes. I assume that each laser sight is attached to a rifle or machine pistol, right? So what happened to all of them? There were like 30! Did they all just go home after that scene?

6. The "bad guys" obviously just want to kill everyone in the precinct. There is no indication that they want ANYONE alive. So if that's the case, why do they ONLY rely on flash grenades? At least twice they chucked flash-bangs at the main characters and successfully blinded them, when a simple grenade would have taken them all out.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but when I watch movies like this, it makes me wonder how stupid the director thinks the audience is. We have to suspend disbelief to a certain degree, but when a movie makes you go "Oh, PLEASE! Is this a joke?" more than a few times, you know they went wrong somewhere.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A genre film with style and substance. June 28, 2005

By D. Knouse

Format:DVD

Going in I was expecting an Action film with two-dimensional characters and loads of gunfire caught on film with shaky camera shots to make them seem more violent than they already are. Instead of adhering to conventional 'Action' film nonsense and one-liners, however, the makers of this film have created a story where the characters are either likeable or interesting to watch and the violence is both realistic and often incredibly brutal. There are some cliche' plot twists that appear at the expected times, but to the credit of these storytellers they do not dwell on them as if the audience should somehow be wowed or shocked by the revelation(s). Thus any predictability is overshadowed by quicksilver action sequences or character-driven moments that are equally intense. This film has a strong cast of actors led by a very capable director and a fantastic production staff that give this film more style and substance than is typical of the genre. The photography is excellent and elevates the look of this movie to a highly professional level, as do all the technical aspects such as stuntwork and gunfire during the many firefights. The action is bloody, to put it mildly, with some gruesome kills that made even a seasoned Action film fan like myself cringe and wince. What I especially love about this film and with very few other Action flicks is that all the characters either get hurt or mortally wounded at some point during the story. No one escapes unscathed. In most other Action movies it gets ridiculous to see characters running through a swarm of bullets and not getting hit; for that alone, "Assault on Precinct 13" should be raised above the average Action film fare and revered for its exceptional use of violence as a means to an end rather than as a flashy way in which to deceive an audience into forgiving a film for falling flat during the quieter moments. Both Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburn lead the way with their star-power and the rest of the cast rally around them to help the viewers care about each and every one of them. This film is a pleasant surprise and a solid addition to the Action film genre. Thank you.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars lost track of what it should be about. August 2, 2009

By Michael Dobey

Format:DVD

This movie is a travesty that only proves that sometimes a great movie can be remade so badly that it loses all reasonable resemblance to the original. This movie is so bad that it takes the premise of a group of cops and convicts under attack from a killer gang (and most real gangs are organized drug dealing killers) in a closing precinct building into a idiotic story about bad cops attacking the station instead. It's badly written and in spite of some good actors it's just a nasty movie without much merit. How many times in history have gangs surrounded and attacked someplace and murdered kids even to get what they want? many times... how many times has this happened with a group of bad cops? and even worse cops who act like untrained idiots! oh well. they lost the premise and real menace that a true evil gang can deliver because they (in some cities) are already shooting up and killing innocent people routinely , including kids who get in their way. Sure there
are some bad cops; but this movie has no charm and seems mindlessly hateful about cops in general. (I am not a cop by the way) Skip this one and watch the original which is a crime movie classic!.