Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) is a cop in charge of an urban police station under siege in director Jean-Franois Richet's remake of John Carpenter's 1976 cult classic Assault on Precinct 13.

Director Jean-François Richet's Assault on Precinct 13 feels less like a remake of John Carpenter's 1976 exploitation classic than an all-out assault on the long dead and buried legacy of the B movie. The story begins with a bit of back-story involving Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke), an undercover narcotics officer trying to make a score and bust some edgy Eastern European thugs. Roenick fast-talks his way through the initial exchange, but his case of the juiced-up jitters has nothing to do with character and everything to do with Hawke struggling to keep up with Richet's efforts to spawn the stylistic lovechild of Tony Scott (Man on Fire) and Joe Carnahan (Narc), two directors well experienced with guns and grit.

Hawke might have received a Best Supporting Actor nod recently for carrying Denzel Washington's jockstrap in Training Day, but he doesn't match the fury of either Man on Fire's avenging Washington or the righteous sparks created by the highly underrated Jason Patric in Narc. When the situation sours and runs red with the spilled blood of Roenick's team, the audience knows the physically and emotionally scarred cop will be poised to redeem himself.

Flash-forward eight months, and Richet plops another storyline on the fast track. Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) is a gangster who meets with dirty cops in Catholic churches in the middle of morning mass to conduct business. The back pews are better than the corner office in a high-rise, and you can't beat the fact that everyone is so caught up in the rapture that they fail to notice when Bishop sacrifices his business associate and leaves him slumped forward in a prayerful pose. Eventually, Bishop gets driven from the church and brought into the custody of an even more corrupt police state. The stage is finally set, more or less.

John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 took its time establishing the scenario of the inevitable siege as well, but its efficiency in the payoff was worth the time. Its simplicity was a hook. Audiences didn't need to know or care about who exactly was on the outside trying to get in. The faceless street gang replaced George Romero's undead in his Night of the Living Dead, another siege story, but Carpenter was also aiming to update the western, giving it an urban flavor in a time when the country was still struggling openly with sociopolitical tension. In a low-budget, no-name, action movie, the decision to cast a black man (Austin Stoker) as the authority figure (Officer Ethan Bishop) resonated without having to draw undue attention to itself.

Too bad there's nothing as interesting going on in the update. Richet is working in contemporary studio move-making mode.

Fishburne uses his signature phantom menace to creep through this post-Matrix affair without an ounce of the humanity he brought to his Matrix character Morpheus. Maria Bello, Drea de Matteo, Ja Rule and John Leguizamo handle supporting duties. The leader of the rogue cops is Gabriel Byrne, asked to do nothing more than show up with his Irish accent. When all hell breaks loose and it's time to let the inside demons have at the invading devils, no one cares about the characters. Worse yet, the supposed claustrophobia of the siege has been reduced to the level of capturing the neighborhood kids playacting a game of capture-the-flag on film.

The difference between the two Assaults is the difference between the approach filmmakers and studios took during the '70s and today. The current rules are more concerned with crossover potential and reaching target audiences that will guarantee huge grosses when movies assault screens opening weekend. Who cares if this Assault will be remembered 30 years from now by some studio or filmmaker who might decide to update it again?

The preposterous action set pieces and the pretty parade of second-tier faces strive for B-movie glory in an age when B movies no longer exist. The movie game isn't about playing a gritty game for the simple enjoyment of the game. Everybody wants to make a killing. The stars are aiming for greater stardom, Hollywood wants to cannibalize every project into a potential three-picture franchise and audiences want the assault to continue. So by the end of Assault on Precinct 13, when everyone onscreen becomes a killer, it is a sign that the system is working. The unanswered question is for how long. Grade: D