Recently, events converged to remind me there was a (sort of) remake of John Carpenter’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 back in 2005. Well, really what happened was that movie PLANE came out – the Gerard Butler one with the plane – and that’s from the same director, Jean-François Richet. He did a couple gritty French crime movies in the ‘90s and then his phone rang and Hollywood said, “Hello, this is Hollywood, would you be interested in remaking ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, or as you call it in France, ASSAUT?” I imagine he very thoughtfully said “Oui” and then hung up.
According to his commentary track they didn’t have the script yet when they hired him. He chose James DeMonaco to write it because he’d just seen THE NEGOTIATOR, a movie this does seem kinda similar to. DeMonaco had also written a film for Francis Ford Coppola*. (read the rest of this shit…)
PLANE is the new Gerard Butler movie that had the brilliant idea of using a title so goofy that everybody talked about it and it seemed to end up with more awareness than his last three movies combined. Butler (
BLOOD FATHER is the kind of simple story that I like. Ex-con, now-sober John Link (Mel Gibson, 
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT is part 1 of a 2 part French true-ish crime saga about Jacques Mesrine, international terror, mustachioed robber of banks and casinos, killer of forest rangers, escaper of prisons, etc. One of these lovable maniacs who make the world worse and the movies better. This review is just of the first part. Both parts have been available as an import for a while but I waited for the official American release, so I gotta wait another month for part 2.
