What I really liked here were the writers attempts to add some back stories to its core characters that I really seemed to enjoy here. From the crime past of Bishop who we learn is a very vicious and smart gangster, to our main character Jake who has a sad past as an officer and must get over it very fast and learn to lead this group of mismatched civilians in to war to battle against a common enemy. Hawke can handle this role well. I like Hawke, he can play a cocky bastard (Tape), to a humble reluctant hero which he manages to play and sell to the audience here rather convincingly. So, we're also given other interesting although minor back stories ala Bello's therapist character, the gorgeous DeMatteo's personality/back story, and Dennehy's. There is depth and color this time around as minimal as it may be. As for the cast, they pull in great performances.

I ignored the fact that Fishburne and Hawke could play these two roles in their sleep, and focused on that these characters create some brutal antagonist-protagonist chemistry together who team up only because they must. Fishburne is bad ass. He was in "The Matrix" and he was in "Othello", this man can take a one-dimensional role like Bishop and make him commanding and many times heroic. For the rest of the cast, Brian Dennehy is great here and is in rare form, Maria Bello gives a great performance here as the quirky therapist who finds she isn't as mentally stable as she thought, DeMatteo who is just spewing charisma and sex appeal here, and Leguizamo who is a lot of fun to watch as a crack head who goes above and beyond and creates a sheer air of Peter Lorre with the husky whisper and spineless attitude. The cast make this worth watching overall, and to the producers, I give them credit. As for directing, Richet can't top Carpenter, but he does a damn good job here with some very exciting camera angles, and great filming among the action and really helps the film become a spectacle.

Well, it's safe to say that when it comes to films and my expectations, ninety percent of the time I'm right on the money. Sure, it's arrogant, but who cares, I can usually tell ten minutes in to a film what I'm getting myself in to, and once I see I've stepped in to something smelly, I dread it. With this remake, I expected nothing and, just as I suspected, I got practically nothing at all. You can say that my expectations got the better of my experience, but that only helped me to see what a load of junk this is, and you can reason to see this as a stand alone film, but it's not. It's a remake, and comparatively a load of crap, and a very empty experience when you pit it against my beloved "Assault on Precinct 13" originally made by John Carpenter. Watch that for a balls to wall, exciting action bonanza.

When you look at this you see a twist of the "Die Hard" formula instead of a twist from the original film which excelled at being mindless action without excuse. This strives to show audiences that it's anything but, yet it just ends up being a very empty experience with nothing earned and nothing gained. The original film had the air of exploitation and grind house with a very grainy stark film quality that presented such a grim action flick that was more than what it pretended to be. Carpenter, never the shooter for simplicity, created a very tense and exciting action film that was just beaming with excitement and you gave a shit about the characters in spite of the fact that there was little emphasis. The writers try to top that by attempting to create characters we can care about with really boring back stories that don't serve as plot elements, but are just devices to be used later on for a convenient twist. In the end, this was more exploitative than the predecessor because it exploits the stars and never truly exposes the talent they possess.

I was just completely left unfulfilled and I seriously wanted to be surprised and tell you that this was a great remake, but it wasn't. It's just so utterly void of anything worth remembering. Sure, some of it is exciting, but so is going to the ATM machine, what I wanted was something that stood out and there was just nothing. Why are there woods behind a city precinct? If the surrounding perimeter is filled with factories, where are the workers? How come no one heard helicopters and explosions in the distance? None of it ever makes sense here, and I was just so annoyed that the writers spent so much time trying to outdo its original, it forgot to include any life in to it.

So, we're given a cheesy romantic sub-plot, characters that die too abruptly, sub-plots that go nowhere, and people we just don't care about. In the end it's a vehicle for many talented actors, and an out of work rapper. One of the many aspects this fails in is the mood. The original film had such a thick burning tension and sense of urgency within it, and lacks the style and electric Carpenter score that perfectly set the mood. The fact that an entire police station is being held under siege by an endless horde of gang members whom outnumber and outgun the officers within sent a searing sense of urgency that this lacks without shame. The great cast adds a sense of credibility to this film, but that doesn't mean it's good. The cast is properly wasted including Gabriel Byrne who is reduced to occasional sequences with a monologue here and there. None of it ever really makes a lick of sense.

This movie asks you to suspend your disbelief, but in order to do that, you'll have to be lobotomized, because the moves both the hostages and villains make in this are incredibly stupid. Take for instance the incredibly annoying movie making scene in which Bishop is supposed to be assassinated by cops. They walk in to the jail cell, take their sweet time and are discovered. These are cops, trained soldiers. Walk in from behind, kill the target, and walk out. But, no it's not always so easy or obvious with these types of movies. The villains here are incredibly idiotic with these soldiers who fumble, and miss, and can get beat up by a civilian without any hesitation, all of which are sequences that were excruciatingly stupid. These cops cant hit the side of a barn. There are snipers in every corner and armed gunmen and they can't shoot an unarmed man with a limp? Come on, now! We see an army of armed soldiers and they're hardly ever around to pick these people off.

And in one particular scene, a sniper is pointing at a suspect hiding behind a snow bank and he declares "No shot". It's snow, you dumb ass! It's ice water. Shoot through it and they're down! And if the officers are aware that there are four prisoners and five cops in the opener, why ask how many people are in the building later on? As with the usual ideas of a modern remake there are one-dimensional characters introduced just to die, a lot of one-liners both comedic and attempting to be deemed historic, and occasional comedic relief that is too goofy to enjoy. Like everything else here, the ending is so inconsistent. Everything just stops, like that? The end? Well, I guess I can thank you for that.

The cast is great, the acting is great, and a bread crumb of it can be exciting, but in the end it just doesn't hold a candle to the original. Carpenter makes out like a bandit with money galore while this pollutes our screens. God bless you, Carpenter, you're smarter than I thought.

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