Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) is an update of John Carpenter’s gritty 1976 remake of the 1959 classic western, Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks). In all three films a notorious criminal, temporarily incarcerated in an ill-equipped police station, has to be protected by a few beleaguered lawmen and dysfunctional volunteers against a faceless mob. The setting, therefore, is absolutely critical as both a literal and metaphoric last-bastion of law, order and humanity.
Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 used a real Los Angeles police station as its central location, and this contributed to the film an increased degree of authenticity. The 2005 version adopts this logic by using an old red-brick railway police building that was constructed in Toronto’s West Don Lands in the early 1920s…
The full 300 word version of this scene location analysis is published in World Film Locations Toronto, edited by Tom Ue, published by Intellect Books, 2014.
Carl Wilson 