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It's New Year's Eve. A Detroit police precinct is closing down—only a couple of cops remain on duty there while the staff clean out their desks. The weather outside is frightful. And thus the stage is set for trouble … which arrives in the form of a bus transporting prisoners. When the prisoners are locked into holding cells to wait out the storm, the precinct is besieged by killers bent on gunning down everyone inside—cops and crooks alike.

This remake of John Carpenter's 1976 thriller Assault on Precinct 13 strays from the details of the original in many ways. Instead of a black cop pushing back against prejudice, we have Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke), a white cop with a therapist (Maria Bello). Instead of sparse, sharp-edged dialogue, there's relentless profanity and crass innuendoes. And as our heroes get out the heavy artillery to defend themselves from the invasion, the villains they use for target practice aren't street gang members … they're cops.

Director Jean-Pierre Richet, formerly a rap music producer, makes his first prominent American movie into an unremarkable, even dismaying, event—just another generically hyperviolent and overbearing genre flick. Instead of improving on Carpenter's film, he's only succeeded in making it a wearying assault on the eyes, ears, and intelligence.

My full review is at Christianity Today Movies.

Tom Neven (Plugged In) says, "The audience is encouraged to root for a bad guy who's fighting badder guys. The sense that bad character and bad actions aren't mitigated by later 'good' behavior is completely missing. And that leads to a final disappointing development." It ends, he says, with "a plot twist that will assault audiences' moral worldview every bit as much as the film's out-of-control vulgarity and violence."

Harry Forbes (Catholic News Service) says the movie "has its share of suspenseful moments, but the bloodshed and violence seem unnecessarily explicit, and the improbable story calls for major suspension of disbelief. For an action film the attention to characterization and good performances make this several cuts above the usual mindless mayhem movie."

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) says it's "peopled by stereotypes instead of fully drawn characters. The cast is actually better than the material and as a result the movie reaches the level of effective B-level entertainment."

Mainstream critics are divided over whether to rate it as an above-average or below-average action thriller.

Critics retitle Are We There Yet?: "Is It Over Yet?"

Nick (Ice Cube) is bringing his girlfriend's kids from Portland to Vancouver for New Year's Eve. A simple enough premise. But there's a problem—the kids aren't fond of their mom's boyfriends, and their New Year's resolution is to make the trip miserable for him.

Sound like a winner? At the box office, yes. With critics, absolutely not. In fact, mainstream critics are giving this a 90% disapproval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Religious press critics agree.

Peter T. Chattaway (Christianity Today Movies) says, "Are We There Yet? is more interested in crass humor than in creating remotely believable characters that we might actually care about. Sometimes the gags just seem inappropriate for a 'family film.' But it isn't all innuendo, slapstick humor and physical abuse. Suffice to say the film, short as it is, has so much padding … that parents may well spend the last few reels checking their watches and itching to ask their children, 'Is it over yet?'"

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January (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49