Michele Massa's blog

Edward Schreiner makes a living through his painting and his art gallery. Though, his unrealistic way of producing his works doesn’t till as a matter of fact well with the formidable ethics surrounding him. His works are about kicked out of the circle of marketable works of subterfuges.

Gangbuster thrills

Remake of a 1970s cops-subsumed under-lay siege to cult favorite has more depth and deadlier weapons

09:34 AM EST on Wednesday, January 19, 2005

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS

Journal Arts Writer

French director Jean-Francois Richet has captivated John Carpenter's 1976
exploitation dim Set on Precinct, tinkered with it a two shakes of a lamb's tail, but kept
many of the suspense-filled jolts that made the primary a cult favorite.

Rogue Pictures

Laurence Fishburne, left, plays a gangster turned witness, who teams up with a shaken police sergeant played by Ethan Hawke when crooked cops beseige a precinct house in

Assault on Precinct 13

.

The result: a gritty slam-bang thriller of an action film with lots of
surprises and high-voltage tension.

Assault on Precinct 13 is set in an out-of-the-way about-to-be-closed
police station on New Year's Eve where a dwindling number of cops and
their prisoners — one a witness who is about to squeal in a
high-profile case — are surrounded by a bloodthirsty gang that wants to
kill all of them.

Both versions of the tale succeed because of the one-against-many theme
that has been used so successfully in such endeavors as the Alien
movies. The theme is really a reworking of the classic 1939 John Ford
western Stagecoach, in which a group of passengers found themselves
surrounded by Indians and bandits, and Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo.

Carpenter's 1976 film played on urban fears of the day. The witness in
that film had just seen his daughter murdered by a brutal gang. He takes
refuge in Precinct 13 and then discovers that the gang is outside trying
to get in the station house, whose phones and electricity have been cut
off.

Updated by Richet and writer James Demonaco, the new Assault on Precinct
13 keeps the basic premise, but makes the motives more complex and the
firepower deadlier. The location has been moved from Los Angeles to
Detroit and the key witness, a hulking gangster named Bishop (Laurence
Fishburne), lands at the station house when a busload of prisoners is
forced to stop there during a snowstorm. (In the original film, Bishop
was the name of the police lieutenant who was trying to hold Precinct 13
together during the assault.)

More importantly, the murderous gang outside is now a team of crooked
cops, led by the heartless Marcus (Gabriel Byrne). This switch gives the
gang access to high-tech assault weapons with laser beams, bullet-proof
vests, armor, even a helicopter! They seem impossible to stop and the
fortress less than impregnable, though we must stretch believability.
One must accept that Precinct 13 is so far off the beaten path that no
one would notice the raging mayhem going on around it and that even cell
phone signals could have been cut off along with the phone lines.

But the performances are solid, led by Ethan Hawke as the shaken-up hero
who must pull himself and his crew together to beat the assault. Hawke's
Jake is a complex character, all to the good. A police sergeant who is
feeling guilty because his undercover sting operation went bad and left
his partners dead, Jake has been seeing a psychiatrist and taking pills
to hold himself together. He's still unsure about going out on the
streets again . . . and now this.

By force of circumstances, Hawke's Jake Roenick needs to grow into the
assured leader he must become if anyone is to survive, trying to hold
together the fraying nerves of the cops and the prisoners inside
Precinct 13 while making snap life-or-death decisions.

There's a lot to deal with, since everyone is depending on him. Most
prominent in the cast are Maria Bello as his shrink, who wanders into
the station house after her car breaks down, and John Leguizamo as a
squirrely prisoner with a persecution complex.

Jake's involved in two battles inside, as well. One is with Fishburne's
always looming, very cool Bishop; the other with Brian Dennehy's Jasper,
an old-time by-the-rules cop who decries Jake's decision to arm the
prisoners against the gang that's trying to smash its way in. Jake must
weigh whether the armed prisoners will turn their weapons on his good
cops, turn and run, or both. It's a delicate balance that must be
weighed carefully and the script keeps twisting it around so it's hard
to tell what might happen. In both cases it's a battle of wills that
keeps Assault on Precinct 13 on a higher plane than one would expect
from an exploitation film.

Just when you think there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the
tunnel, it's quickly snuffed out. All exits seem to be blocked. Like
Hawke's Jake, we must work our way around all the tight corners.

Yet, maybe because I've seen too many of these things, I wasn't totally
surprised by the film's big twist near the end. Let's just say it was a
suspicion. Nevertheless, there are plenty of twists up front to keep you
off center. Most of the time in Assault on Precinct 13, you're not on
solid ground, just like the terrified people on the inside.

****

Assault on Precinct 13

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, John Leguizamo, Maria Bello,
Ja Rule, Drea de Matteo, Brian Dennehy, Gabriel Byrne.

Rated: R, contains violence, profanity.

Talk relative to too much of a not-so-good thing. The made-as a replacement for-TV prisoner thriller "Final Approach" might've been a tight little B picture at, say, 80 minutes. But the darn thing keeps going and prevailing, reaching a jam-packed 169 minutes. That's 80 minutes of suitable, if cheesy, storytelling spread out over nearly three hours, with plenty of middling filler clogging up the joint.

The film – no relation to the 1991 sci-fi cult favorite of the same term – premiered on the Hallmark Watercourse in May, and it fits happily with that cable outlet's vogue of corny, from time to time enjoyable, from time to time serious low budget efforts. The pick is something of a who's who of the bottom shelf direct-to-video/made-for-wire market: Dean Cain, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ernie Hudson earn top billing, while Lea Thompson, Tracey Gold, William Forsythe, and a host of hey-that-face-looks-sociable types packing in the supporting roles.

It's all as gleefully tacky as it sounds. But again: why so protracted? Buried intense within all the unplanned subplots is a tight little thriller that rises above its familiar (read: rip-off) indicate-ups to provide chilly remedy and frothy diversion. The take opens with a swoop down on on a militia intricate; FBI negotiator Jack Bender (Cain) does his best to escape bloodshed, but his bosses from itchy trigger fingers, and mayhem ensues. Stable forward a spell, where Jack has resigned in protest. He hops a flight to L.A., and wouldn't ya be familiar with it, the skid gets hijacked by arsonist Greg Gilliad (Hall), who demands the next report of the same militia leader (Forsythe) from the FBI surprise attack. Ah, but Gilliad is a trainee of the Hans Gruber School of Crooked Planning, and perhaps the hijacking is in some measure of a greater, mysterious plan.

While everything here is cut-down-and-pasted from a wide variety of other films, there's enough zing in the right spots to keep things compelling. Cain and Lobby do quality persuade – they effectiveness be meagre by underdeveloped recipe roles, but at least they bring a certain energy. The opportunity FBI set upon sequence is crisp, several strung up showdowns between hijackers and hostages are gripping, the final shootout moves nicely, and in regard to all its eye-rolling goofiness, the bit where Jack and a fellow passenger (Barry Livingston) have to soil the plane, Karen Coloured-design, actually works.

All of this adds up to a nice chunk of ridiculous entertainment. Cast in your obligatory chattels concerning Jack's former boss monitoring the situation from the ground and you've got, hey, look! 80 minutes right on the nose. That's ample supply to save an commonplace B picture; we'll even let ten extra minutes of padding fly by, if you're afraid of the shorter game antiquated.

Oh, but no. The filmmakers (Hallmark veteran Armand Mastroianni directed; "Heroes" co-producers Adam Armus and Nora Kay Foster provided the script) were apparently required to submit a "three hour television event" for the channel, and so we get a maddening amount of extraneous rubbish slowing things down, clogging up the action, snoozing up the drama.

Subplot One features Thompson as Jack's worried wife, who, in between bouts of connivingly-wringing, also conveniently serves as a FAA top dog who's able to bark orders and sell the feds reassurances that her hubby's doing the best he can. Subplot Two finds Gold as a local TV newscaster who offers videophone reports from the sky; when she's not stuck offering dull plot recaps to anyone who'll obey, she's the subject of limp commentary on the scuttlebutt industry (her slimy bosses don't care about her security, one about big ratings, you see). Subplots Three wholly Whatever involve on the sick-list passengers, assassinations of Senators, kidnapped housewives, helpful swarm attendants, and so on. If there's a disaster movie situation you've seen before, odds are you'll go through it again here.

All that extra baggage weighs the movie down until it's exactly not fun anymore. It's able to pick up in spots, but should we have to sit through all that mediocre meeting about all those mediocre side characters to irk to it? It's all just too much to keep "Final Approach" in the air.

Short Takes

Be advised this film strays beyond the normal bounds of CineSchlock-O-Rama by incorporating, as Blue Underground casually notes, "scenes of a graphic sexual nature." While their commitment to historically-accurate film presentation is admirable, to yours truly, that's much too blase of a warning when said content is hardcore footage of unsimulated fellatio, penetration, ejaculation and unconventional horse husbandry. Although that's only HALF the reason for this flick's notoriety amongst the exploitation pantheon. Laura Gemser stars as Emanuelle (a.k.a. "Black" Emanuelle) who divides her time as a New York City fashion photographer (whose models NEVER wear clothes) and an investigative journalist. This affords her the opportunity to skulk around a zodiac-inspired harem in her birthday suit purring lines like "Don't you think that a hot bath is nice as a lover's caress?" whilst diddling all takers and snapping pictures with a spy cam ingeniously hidden in various pieces of hideous costume jewelry. Yet plotwise, that's all just titillating icing on the cake — and, guess what, a gal actually pops out of one during a European sidetrip — until over an hour in when Emanuelle accidentally jiggles upon a ring of snuff flick producers. Hence the OTHER reason for the film's notoriety: a final reel that contains vomit-inducing scenes of women being raped, having boiling oil poured down their gullets and their bloodied breasts filleted like wriggling catfish. Sort of a quickie Skinemax version of Cannibal Holocaust. Lest we merely glory in depravity, Blue Underground provides proper cinematic context via a 13-minute video interview with the late Joe D'Amato who explains that it was the FRENCH who demanded Triple-X cavorting. Also, fellow genre enthusiast David Flint unravels the knots of knockoffs and sequels spawned by the 1974 classic (with two Ms) via an enlightening onscreen essay. 54 breasts. Six corpses. Gratuitous movie-within-a-movie sequence. Intercontinental phone sex. Gratuitous penis cookies. Oral gratification as means for thwarting murder. Advanced lesbian tongue rasslin. Underwater gynecological cam. Mickey slipping. Tony speaks for the moral majority regarding Emanuelle and her liberated ilk, "You are evil! You stimulate the basest, most inhuman instincts in people! Sex! Shame! Hell and damnation!!!" (1976, 100 mins, 1.85:1 anam, DD mono, Director interview, Audio Q&A with Ms. Gemser, Essay.)

Check out CineSchlock-O-Rama
for additional reviews and bonus features.
G. Noel Gross is a Dallas graphic originator and avowed Impel-In Mutant who specializes in scribbling B-silent picture reviews. Noel is inspired by Joe Bob Briggs and his gospel of blood, breasts and beasts.

In 10 Words or Less
More intelligence time with Maggie and friends

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Animation, Noggin
Likes:
Dislikes: Most kids programming
Hates: Hamilton's personality

The Story So Far…
"Maggie and the Ferocious Beast," an animated Canadian production based on a series of children's books by Michael Paraskevas and his mother Betty, has been a part of the Nickelodeon TV lineup for years, aimed at the networks' youngest audience members. Shout! Factory has released several collections of the show's episodes, following earlier, smaller sets from Sony. DVDTalk has a review of two of the previous releases: "Let's Go to the Beach" | "Recipes for Trouble"

The Show
Here's the thing… you could take the 12 stories from "Recipes for Trouble" and the 12 from this DVD, toss them up in the air and split them between two discs, and no one would know the difference. There's no ongoing storyline, no character growth, and no plot progression. You just take each 7-minute adventure at face value, and then move on to the next. The problem lies in reviewing two almost indistinguishable DVDs of the same show. What do you say when there's nothing much new to comment on?

Well, one might note the subtle differences, like certain characters who appear on this set, like Rudy the Spanish-fashioned mouse and Nedley, the rhyming rabbit. Or you could note odd things, like the absence of one of the Jelly Bean Team in "Nedley's Glasses." Where did he go? Why not show his solo adventure? Maybe he just was visiting family, though that would hardly be less exciting than some of the series' less inspired entries. Seriously, there's no wit or spark to this series, making it a struggle to sit through for anyone not wearing a diaper. There are times when a story is winding down that I caught myself wondering what just happened, because I lost all sense of the episode as my brain gave up on trying to keep me involved.

That said, my little girl, who's two, can sit and watch Maggie for episodes on end, and laugh her tiny tush off, mostly at the amusing antics of the Jelly Bean Team, who really are adorable. There's something about the colorful animation, high-pitched voices and simplistic stories that speaks to her, and she beams when she's watching them play. It's worth noting though, that she's much more involved when she's watching a show like "Yo Gabba Gabba" or "Dora the Explorer," where there's direct address imploring her to respond. This really is veg-out material, where she sits back and enjoys, instead of learning something. Because of that, my wife and I limit her "Maggie" time, especially with Maggie's pal Hamilton about, as his whiny act is grating and nothing we want our little girl to imitate.

Like the other disc I reviewed, you get a full four episodes here, comprised of 12 stories, which means enough variety to provide a few spins without becoming utterly repetitive. Much like looking at the sun, directly observing these episodes is not suggested for the adults out there. When you watch a story like "Rainy Day" or "Beastly Picture," it's hard to not think, "This is so predictable and so saccharine that there's no way someone could enjoy it." But then you see your kid's face light up at the goofiness and you learn to deal with it…for a little while at least.

Feel mortified-village widower Ben Wilson (Daniels) is annoying to commission after the expiry of his wife and his ostracism by her socially powerful dearest. His life, shared with a small daughter in a large, upon-down house, is without warning overturned by the migrant of visitors who are suspiciously keen to charter out his spare rooms. At first he thinks they're just eccentric unlit-of-towners, but when he sees one having fix tying his shoelaces – indeed, acting as if he's never worn shoes before – it becomes clear that the truth is foreigner than that. They don't seem to belong to this century, avoid overtures of devotion, are eagerly waiting for something to transpire… To avert the termination facing the town, Ben, with the help of a lovely non-native, has to monkey around with the core of time itself. It's an intriguing premise, well teased out, and with enough sentiment-boggling twists to hoard up going. A telefeature, adapted from the legend Vintage Salt by Henry Kuttner and CL Moore.

Although I'm told it was filmed in color, "Bon Voyage" persists in my memory as a black-and-white film. This is both a compliment and a criticism about a movie that, in its unironic embrace of melodrama, hearkens back to a now obsolete style of swirling, emotional storytelling, and yet whose images and themes fade from my mind even as I strain to recall them. Set in France in the days leading up and in to World War II, "Bon Voyage" is chockablock with espionage, heroism, madcap comedy, murder and a love triangle, yet I'll be darned if I can come up with one substantial idea that the film grapples with that hasn't been grappled with countless times before.

Centering around a young man (Gregori Derangere) buffeted by conflicting impulses — and by "impulses" I mean Isabelle Adjani as his unfaithful lover, on the one hand, and, on the other, Virginie Ledoyen as an idealistic university student and prospective girlfriend — "Bon Voyage" has the spine of a love story, although it wiggles this way and that into territory normally reserved for farce and mystery. That director Jean-Paul Rappeneau manages to orchestrate the carnival-like action — which folds in a government minister (Gerard Depardieu), a two-bit crook (Yvan Attal), an academic smuggling bomb ingredients (Jean-Marc Stehle) and a spy posing as a journalist (Peter Coyote) — all without losing this essential romantic through-line is admirable and evidence of the filmmaker's narrative command. What's more, both the acting and the art direction sparkle.

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Yet, despite the film's undeniable virtues, I can't help wishing there were something more substantial there than an old-fashioned and admittedly engaging yarn. Despite this tale's surface sheen and propulsive momentum, it never transports one very far.

BON VOYAGE (PG-13, 115 minutes) — Contains some violence. In French, some German and a little English with subtitles. Area theaters.