The Assault (1998) User Reviews (5)

A clumsy rip-off of Carpenter's major work

[pzanardo · 4/10 · 29 April 2002]

"The assault" is just a clumsy rip-off of Carpenter's major work "Assault at Precinct 13". The good action and suspense scenes are xerox copies of the corresponding ones in Carpenter's film. An amount of irrelevant stuff is added at the beginning of the movie.

Anyway, "The assault" could be entertaining. To see tough and (more or less) attractive women shooting down dozens of bad guys is always funny. Needless to say, such a situation contains a remarkable erotic tinge. Personally, I'd have preferred to have no man at all among the defenders of the besieged house. The love story between the female cop and the ex-marine guy is a major weakness of the film. The movie contains a remarkable lot of politically correct feminism. I bet the director Wynorski thought: "I'll get no much credit in making this minor B movie: at least, let's avoid troubles with the feminists".

Flaws and absurdities are spread along the movie. A main one: the Zombi-like way the bad ones attack the house (and are killed). That was justified in Carpenter's film, since there we had a gang of wholly drugged, death-devoted, crazy fanatics. Here we have a mob of professional criminals: I don't see why they should be desirous to be killed so stupidly. The job by the cast is so and so, but could be worse. And the female characters are nice.

After all, if you happen to meet "The assault", you may even avoid to switch your TV off.

Amusing little rip-off

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 24 April 2018]

THE ASSAULT is a rather amusing little action flick from B-movie director Jim Wynorski that plays out as an all-female copy of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. The opening sequence, in which a stripper beats up a squad of protection racket goons, sets the scene well and before long we move to a random safe house, where an endless army of '90s-era street thugs are gunning for a drug dealer's wife holed up inside. Wynorski films are notoriously bad in general but this is one of his more entertaining movies, even if it is a complete rip-off from beginning to end. The female angle is a fun one and there's even a role for an established actor in the form of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE's Matt McCoy, playing the handyman. At least there's plenty of action to take your mind off the familiarity of the plot.

A two star movie that gets one more for honesty

[MBunge · 3/10 · 26 August 2011]

I can give the people who made this movie credit for one thing. Not for having any talent at acting, writing or directing, but for being honest. This is a bald faced rip off of Assault on Precinct 13. The viewer knows it. The filmmakers know it. The viewer knows the filmmakers know it and the filmmakers know the viewer knows they know, so they didn't pussyfoot around and just called it "The Assault". If every filmmaker was so truthful, there would be a lot of movies out there called either "Star" or "Die".

The story concerns an ass-kicking lady cop named Stacy (Stacie Randall) who's winds up protecting a refreshingly bitchy witness named Lisa (Leslie Ryan) from the drug dealers who killed Lisa's husband. To do that, Stacie drives her car (which appears to be made out of vinyl) to a women's shelter in the woods run by her sister Cindy (Carrie Dobro). We're no sooner clumsily introduced to the collection of stock characters at the shelter (tough chick, black chick, Hispanic chick, crazy chick, etc.) than the drug dealers show up with an army of thugs that come half out of the JC Penny catalog and half out of Michael Jackson's video for "Beat It".

Led by drug kingpin Blade (Rick Dean), the thugs launch wave after wave of mindless attacks on the shelter, only to be mowed down like those metal ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. While that goes on, Stacie flirts with the shelter handyman (Matt McCoy) who turns out to be an ex-marine, most of the stock characters get at least one scene to showcase what you have to be very generous to describe as their "talent", and the shelter dwellers eventually lure the drug gang to its doom by using pretty much the same ruse as the end of that John Carpenter film I mentioned earlier.

This is a solidly terrible production. The performances range from "working actor" to "failed standup comic" to "music video girl" to "skimmed the CliffsNotes edition of Acting For Dummies". The paint-by-numbers script is successful only at filling up space. Director Jim Wynorski appears to have OCD as he not only compulsively intercuts scenes together but obsessively shows characters running down the same long hallway three separate times. The attempts at action are on par with the worst episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger. And despite having a porno-style set up of multiple women trapped inside a house with a single guy, nobody gets naked. This is one of those low budget flicks you've got to have a heavy buzz on to get anything out of it.

When I tell you The Assault ends with a two-minute long countdown to an explosion, you probably know what kind of film it is. I mean, who has a two-minute countdown to anything in a movie? And then that two minutes is stretched out through cinema magic to about 10 or 15 minutes in real time.

If you're one of those folks who believe in Yin and Yang and you end up watching the original Assault on Precinct 13 and need to balance out the universe by seeing a film as bad as that one is good, you might want to rent this piece of crap. No one else needs to bother.

Fast-paced, enjoyable nonsense

[JimFK · 6/10 · 29 June 1999]

Sure, it's highly derivative of "Assault On Precinct 13", but that was pretty derivative of "Rio Bravo..." Not to say this is as good as that, but it's aim is a little lower -- it wants to give you 85 minutes or so of fast-paced mayhem populated with beatiful women, and it works! The lead detective, Stacey Randall, is well-directed and really cute, and her give-and-take with partner Leo Rossi (a talented character actor) works well, adding weight to key plot developments. Don't get me wrong, it's completely silly -- but you can watch the whole thing with a smile on your face, especially when the women go in the basement of the house they're trapped in and it looks twice as large as the house itself -- but the assault sequences, while unrealistic, are well-edited and involving. For genre fans, worth a look, and another reminder that when Wynorski's on his game he makes flicks right up there with the best of the 70's Cormans made by Dante, etc.

Lots of Dead Bodies and Plenty of Action

[Michael_Elliott · 19 August 2018]

The Assault (1996)

*** (out of 4)

Female cop Stacy (Stacie Randall) takes a woman to a shelter after she witnessed her boyfriend murdered by a drug cartel. Pretty soon the cartel tracks the woman down and begins an attack on the shelter so Stacy and the rest of the ladies must put up a fight to keep them out.

This low-budget action picture from Jim Wynorski is obviously a take off on ASSAULT FROM PRECINCT 13, which of course was a take off on John Wayne's RIO BRAVO. If you're looking for a big-budget action movie then you're certainly coming to the wrong place and if you're wanting some sort of art film, well, that's not this movie. With that being said, if you're looking for an action movie that has non-stop violence then you're certainly at the right movie.

What I liked the most about this picture is that it makes up for the low-budget by making sure there are countless death scenes. In fact, I really do wonder if this film has one of the highest body counts in film history because the entire premise of the film basically has tons of men running out of the woods to attack the house and of course they are constantly being shot up. The film is rated PG-13 so don't expect a bunch of gore but the non-stop piles of bodies falling was a lot of fun.

Wynorski certainly keeps the film moving at a very good pace and there's no question that he does a very good job with the film. It also helps that the cast is a lot of fun and that includes Randall who does a nice job carrying the film. There are a lot of familiar faces in the supporting parts including Matt McCoy (THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE), Melissa Brasselle (various Wynorski films), Leo Rossi (HALLOWEEN II), Peter Spellos (SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II) and Toni Naples (HARD TO DIE). The fun cast certainly helps keep the viewer entertained.

THE ASSAULT isn't a masterpiece but for a low-budget action film it is about as fun as you're going to get.