This movie definitely made me laugh but that doesn't mean it was exactly funny. Well, then again, me and my friends had a lot of fun watching it.I doubt there is anything about this movie that hasn't been done at least twice before, just like the plot itself. All of the characters are overused movie cliché cardboard-box roles that don't even require acting skills; accordingly, such skills are not delivered. We have the corrupt cop, a ruthless killer who claims to care about his men and their families whilst caring nothing about people he shoots in the forehead at so close a range as to have blood spat on his face. We have the "worn-out cop on the edge" so nicely pointed at in the discussion boards of this movie; we have the old one-day-away-from-retirement-cop who just about everyone must have immediately identified as the most likely man on the inside, since he had most to gain and he didn't utter a trustworthy word throughout the movie. About as see-through as a glass house on a sunny day. The big black gangster king was a copy of all previous big black gangster kings in movie history (they could've just called him Marcellus Wallace), but just slightly tougher and more ruthless, because something has to emphasize that we also know Laurence Fishburne from actually good movies. Then we finally have the HIGHLY EDUCATED doctor who can't think of anything reasonable to do as soon as the situation differs from her ordinary life and who spends the majority of the movie sitting in a corner helplessly trying to figure out how to hold on to the weapon she was given. NOT USING IT.The whole siege story is not interesting, not original (having been used twice before), and this movie manages to add absolutely nothing interesting to it. There is the initial probe, then the laying of the siege, then the assault, then the escape attempts. Meanwhile a bunch of strained, stressed, freaked out cops and thugs manage to hold off a Police assault team with high-tech equipment and the quite important advantage of VISION. Then again, in deep night, with the power cut and with a snow storm raging overhead, there is definitely a lot of light coming in, so who really cares about night vision.But the best part comes right at the end. In the first scenes showing Precinct 13, we see it is situated in an outskirt of an industrial city; factories and office buildings surround it on all sides. From this point, the besieged walk maybe a hundred meters in a sewer and where do they end up? Some alley ending right in the middle of a forest! A FOREST! Where did that forest come from? Who decided to lay a pine forest in the middle of an industrial area? How is this forest, in the last scene, suddenly on a hill over the city in question, while in the scenes inside the forest it looked deceptively FLAT?? From here I leave the judgment to you, and to your common sense. Go and see this movie if you're looking for an unintended good laugh, I can really recommend it.
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