SIEGE MENTALITY 'ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13' A REMAKE FOR ITS TIME.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Not all remakes are egregious. Just 99 percent of them.

Jean-Francois Richet hopes his new version of ``Assault on Precinct 13'' will join the ranks of the lucky 1 percent.

In this specific case, the odds are with him.

``I was nervous, sure,'' the French director says, in recently learned English, of his first American movie. ``But I always thought I could make a different movie and respect the original. When I showed this movie to John, I was very nervous. But afterward, he said, 'Different movie, different time, same spirit.' I went 'Yeaaaah. Whew!' ''

John would be John Carpenter, whose micro-budgeted first ``Assault on Precinct 13'' established the pattern in 1976 for many an urban shootout to follow. Set mostly inside an isolated Los Angeles police station under siege by inner-city gangs, ``Assault'' itself was acknowledged to be a remake of one of the greatest Westerns of all time, Howard Hawks' 1959 ``Rio Bravo.''

But the cinematic DNA goes deeper than that. Hawks remade ``Rio Bravo'' with the same star, John Wayne, in 1967 as ``El Dorado,'' and included some similar elements in the last film they made together, ``Rio Lobo'' (1970).

Speaking of same-story shape-shifting, the basic premise of a cutoff band trying to defend its last refuge goes back at least as far as the sci-fi thriller ``The Thing From Another World,'' which Hawks produced and is widely considered to have directed in 1951, and which Carpenter remade as ``The Thing'' in 1982.

Toss in other genre variations (practically every zombie movie since ``Night of the Living Dead'' follows the template), and you've got a lot of remakes. And, perhaps unique in this particular story's case, the vast majority of them are pretty good movies.

``It's something about the interplay of the characters under extreme conditions that's always fascinating to us,'' says Carpenter who, besides giving the remake producers his blessing and suggesting that, this time, the force attacking the precinct be corrupt cops rather than criminal gangs, was not involved in the new film. ``And people trapped, trying to get out and survive is always an interesting situation.''

``It's like boxing,'' John Leguizamo, who plays one of the inmates fighting for their lives in the new movie, says of the story's enduring appeal. ``There are certain things that are primal. It's defending your territory, defending your loved ones, defending yourself. I think we all live with that, especially after what happened in New York. Can I defend? Can I rise to the occasion? What would I do in that situation? What kind of man am I? And who are the real heroes in the world? I think that's what talks to you.''

As Leguizamo's remark indicates, the siege story does have a way of mutating (like the Thing!) to reflect the times in which a given film is made. In the '50s, the conservative professional Hawks made ``Rio Bravo'' as a kind of cinematic counter-argument to what he considered the whiny liberal ``High Noon,'' and Carpenter's ``Assault'' reflected the social chaos of the 1960s and '70s. In the Hawks films, Wayne and his few allies fought to hold onto imprisoned bad guys their besiegers wanted to free. But as in Carpenter's ``Assault,'' Ethan Hawke's beleaguered precinct sergeant in the new film has to arm his prisoners, who include Laurence Fishburne and Jeffrey ``Ja Rule'' Atkins, to help fight off his attacking fellow cops.

``John Carpenter's movie took place in the '70s, and it dealt more with the whole rebel thing, that whole era when people turned against the police,'' rapper-actor Atkins observes. ``Now, we've brought it up to date with crooked cops, which is more relevant to what is going on.''

``The great thing about a story like 'Rio Bravo' or 'Assault' is that it can always be adapted to reflect the time,'' Carpenter adds. ``Every movie is, somewhat, a prisoner of the time it's made in. The concerns of the era usually get funneled into the movie in some way or another. But that's what makes it so fascinating. Just looking at the different approaches taken to this story in different eras, it doesn't matter what the evil is outside, in a sense. You can make it a terrorist or whatever the current evil is, if you want. But the central story always holds up.''

So how is the 2005 version different from earlier incarnations?

``I watched the first 'Assault' after I decided to do this movie,'' says Maria Bello (``The Cooler''), who plays one of Hawke's few noncriminal allies in the new version. ``I thought it was very provocative for that time and very interesting, violent, campy. But I wasn't so into it, to be honest. This version is more modern, of course. Edgier, more raw, more current. It isn't so much a remake of that film as it is a retelling in some ways.''

Drea de Matteo, star of TV's ``Sopranos'' and ``Joey,'' also plays a nonviolent woman whom circumstances force to wield guns. Once a student at New York University's highly regarded film school, she was educated in the finer auteurist points of Hawks appreciation. But ...

``I haven't seen 'Rio Bravo' since I was 18 years old, and believe it or not, that was a really long time ago,'' de Matteo says with a laugh. ``So I wouldn't be able to say anything that would make any sense. But I saw the original 'Assault' when I was 25, and I still remember it. I think the foundation of the movie is the same, but I think that in this version we open it up to a whole other level. It doesn't feel like a Hollywood film, it feels a lot dirtier. We had to fight for the ending, and Jean-Francois had to fight for other scenes and plot points.''

Which we won't give away. But director Richet had strong ideas about other aspects of the remake, too.

``In Carpenter's movie, all the characters are like ghosts, with no pasts and no vices,'' the French filmmaker notes. ``That's different in 'Rio Bravo'; Dean Martin drinks a lot, and Robert Mitchum in 'El Dorado' is an alcoholic, too. You don't have just bad or good guys.

``In this movie, I always tried to have this kind of thing. Just gray, no black or white. The main character takes pills, he made a mistake in the past. He's just a human being, no superhero.''

But in the Westerns, both Martin and Mitchum's characters were redeemed by the resolute force of that ultimate midcentury American, John Wayne. Moral self-certainty may be coming back into style - it certainly helped George W. Bush get re-elected - but it's not one of those classic Hawksian virtues a contemporary Frenchman really wants to promote.

``It's not the same time, it's not the same code,'' Richet reckons. ``If you have a monolithic character like John Wayne now, I think it's a joke.''

Richet stops short of claiming any kind of political agenda, though - even if his new ``Assault'' is metaphorically about a divided society, distrustful and at odds over how to cope with an outside threat.

``It was good in the '50s or '60s to just have a man or woman inside and the assault around them,'' the director says. ``But that's not enough now. I think we have to have a problem inside, too. The more conflicted you are, the better. I wanted conflict everywhere, with everybody. Don't forget, they have to work together. They have to.

``I don't know if that's political in America. My movies just reflect what I think, which is that there are no just-good and no just-bad people.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

10 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- cover -- color) ON TARGET

Remake of `Assault on Precint 13' hits the mark

(3) Maria Bello

(4) Laurence Fishburne, top, and Ethan Hawke

(5) ``John Carpenter's The Thing''

(6 -- 10) Some of the many film influences for the remake of ``Assault on Precint 13''