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    Roughneck

    Roughneck

    Jeff Lemire

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    Derek Ouellette's glory days are behind him. His hockey career ended a decade earlier in a violent...

    Cold Blood

    Cold Blood

    Andy McNab

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    Out on the ice, polar nears aren't the only natural born killers. Nick Stone is suffering. The two...

    Winter

    Winter

    Ali Smith

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    The dazzling second novel in Ali Smith's essential Seasonal Quartet -- from the Baileys...

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
1976 | Action, Crime, Thriller
'Why would someone shoot at a police station?' John Carpenter's exemplary action exploitation movie is set in mid-70s Los Angeles but is basically a mash-up of a western and a zombie movie. Two convicts, a secretary and a highway patrol officer find themselves besieged in a soon-to-be-derelict police precinct by hordes of psychopathic street gang members.

One of those examples of a virtually perfect movie: an incredibly economical script with immaculate storytelling is brought to the screen with immensely charismatic performances by the three leads (you watch it now and it's genuinely baffling that none of them had more substantial movie careers). Also a fascinating mixture of old-style and new Hollywood - scenes pastiching the style of Howard Hawks movies sit alongside genuinely provocative moments like the ice cream scene. Overall, though, just a tremendously enjoyable action film, and exhibit A for the case that John Carpenter did his career backwards.