Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
On New Year's Eve, inside a police station that's about to be closed for good, officer Jake Roenick must cobble together a force made up cops and criminals to save themselves from a mob looking to kill mobster Marion Bishop.
This 2005 remake of Carpenter's 1976 cult classic is a competent but largely unremarkable action thriller. The siege premise generates solid tension and the ensemble cast (Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne) delivers serviceable performances, but none are stretched particularly far. The snowstorm Detroit setting adds atmosphere and cinematographer Éric Van Den Brulle gives the film a slick, cold visual palette that suits the material. However, as a remake it carries an inherent novelty deficit — it recycles the core conceit without adding much new conceptually, substituting corrupt cops for street gangs as antagonists in a fairly predictable fashion. The ending disappointingly resolves itself with conventional genre beats and a climax that feels rushed and unsurprising given the buildup. It works as a genre exercise but rarely transcends it.