Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)
Since I've never read up on this film at all, it was surprising to learn that the title is short for
Assault on Precinct 9, District 13. Likewise, since I didn't see or remember
Teproc's review, it was surprising to learn that there's as much
Night of the Living Dead here as
Rio Bravo. Carpenter's successful and eerie score fuels those supernatural associations, turning South LA into an apocalyptic wasteland. At the same time, the amateur acting, familiar LA locations, budget art direction, archetypal characters, and even some of the banter in the dialogue all call to mind any number of 1970s cop shows.
Structurally,
Assault on Precinct 13 deviates from traditional genre norms, with a screenplay that's really just two acts. The first act takes up exactly half of the film's running time, give or take, slowly letting four separate story threads converge. This convergence requires a series of silly coincidences, for which the film is admirably unapologetic. That's maybe the greatest virtue of the script: it just keeps moving the story ahead and never wastes time dwelling on its many narrative flaws. Thus the film has earned a reputation as a "lean" and "taut" thriller, even though that protracted first act probably gets most audiences restless, accustomed as they are to the first plot point coming a full twenty minutes earlier.
The second act of the film is a lengthy siege - the "assault" of the film's title. As with the first act, the gaps in narrative logic don't get in the way of its being entertaining. (I was however continually annoyed that they never collected the guns of their attackers, since their own arsenal was so limited.) There's nothing really exceptional about the scenes — no clever strategy or unexpected reversals or visceral connection — but it's all well executed in simple, unadorned fashion.
Grade: B
Up Next:
The Square and/or
Mommypixote