With only a few hours left in the calendar year, Precinct 13, one of Detroit's oldest precinct houses, is closing. Amid heavy snowfall and unsafe road conditions, only a few lawmen remain on duty for New Year's Eve. They are headed by Sergeant Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke), a good cop wrestling with bad memories of a fatal undercover op from the previous spring. Early on December 31st, formidable crime lord Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) is cornered by an undercover cop. Their ensuing struggle leaves the cop dead, but Bishop captured by the Organized Crime and Racketeering squad run by Marcus Duval (Gabriel Byrne). Bishop is loaded on a bus with other criminals, but the battering snowstorm stops the bus well short of its high security destination. They prisoners are instead stranded at remote and rundown Precinct 13 where they're temporarily incarcerated. When two masked gunmen break in and attack the guards from the bus, everyone inside Precinct 13 realizes that more will come to extract Bishop. With minimal weaponry and maximum courage, they will not go gently into the night, and the thin lines between good and bad bleed together.

There are great movies, then there are good movies, then there are just Ok movies, sadly this movie falls into that last category. The movie was not terrible by any means but neither was it great. The movie was pure popcorn, which is sad because the movie had more potential than that shown by the original. Remakes to me just seem like movies thrown out really quick to garner a fast book when studios run out of ideas. Rarely are they as good as the originals and even more rarely is there a need to remake them. Assault on Precinct has its moments and is fairly entertaining, filled with action and gunfire but that is all there is too the movie. This is the kind of movie you see for a matinee, fairly enjoy yourself and then quickly forget it as the movie leaves no mark whatsoever as its no imaginative or anything new.

Laurence Fishburne is getting old and it’s starting to show. He does a good job as the badass mobster but he never really had that much range as actor and is just been made famous by his roles in the Matrix. Ethan Hawke is the one who steals the show, his character is probably the only three dimensional character on the screen as Fishburne is so one dimensional its not even funny. Everyone likes a badass villain and Fishburne does ok, but nowhere near the king of that role Samuel L Jackson. Its Hawke’s performance that saves the movie and gives it what little depth the movie has. I was absolutely surprised by one moment where they escaped the clichés and managed to something I wasn’t expecting and that almost made the movie worth it.
2.5 stars out of 5