Just a powder keg of a premise (lifted in part from Howard Hawks's "Rio Bravo"), in which a quasi-terrorist group's killing spree culminates in the action described in the title. Carpenter's mastery of wide-screen and almost uncanny talent at crafting suspense and action sequences make "Assault" such a nerve-racking experience that you may have to reupholster your easy chair after watching it at home. In 1988 Alan Jones of "Starburst" said "Assault" is "arguably still the best film [Carpenter] ever made." In 2000 John Kenneth Muir placed the film at No. 3 on his rated list of John Carpenter's filmography, behind "The Thing" and "Halloween". In October 2007, Noel Murray and Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club also ranked "Assault" at No. 3 of John Carpenter's best films ("The Essentials"), saying, "The first John Carpenter film that really "feels" like a John Carpenter film, this homage to Howard Hawks Westerns suggests a path that Carpenter's career might've taken if "Halloween" hadn't become such a hit. Carpenter's made many different kinds of movies over the course of his long career, but he hasn't gotten to return often enough to terse tales of gun-toting heroes and villains." In Jeff Chang's 2005 book, "Can't Stop Won't Stop", he cites "Assault on Precinct 13" as the start of "the urban horror" genre. Chang describes the film  Instead of Indian braves, Zulu warriors or graveyard zombies, Assault on Precinct 13's heroes defended them-selves in a desolate police station against marauding waves of dark, heavily armed gang members seeking revenge for their cop-killed brothers. In his fifth edition of "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film" in 2010, film historian David Thomson described "Assault" as "a Hawksian set of a police station besieged by hoodlums - economical, tense, beautiful and highly arousing. It fulfills all Carpenter's ambitions for gripping the audience emotionally and never letting go." Writers Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell have written of the film: "["Assault"] looks as fresh as the day it was first screened; its violence still shocking, its soundtrack still effective and both the dialogue and its delivery are top notch, all in a film whose $100,000 budget wouldn't satisfy the catering demands of the average Hollywood picture.