John Carpenter
Distretto 13 - Le Brigate Della Morte

Craftsmanship, personality, class, depth, entertainment, all in a superbly B-Movie size: John Carpenter is all and this, as well as being a proud flag bearer of low-cost at all costs, even in the opulence of titles like "Big Trouble in Little China" (a pure entertainment film to be recorded in the annals).

In a 1970s Los Angeles, African-American policeman Ethan Bishop, freshly promoted, is given the "noteworthy" task of overseeing the closure of a police station (the thirteenth precinct), located in a neighborhood plagued by criminal anarchy. Within a few hours, from an abandoned building to itself, Precinct 13 becomes a crumbling fortress assaulted by metropolitan tribes hungry for revenge after the killing of one of their members. The people inside are forced to collaborate: young officer Bishop, two bored secretaries, a couple of prisoners including the death row inmate "Napoleon" Wilson.

On a very simple plot, a modern western monument is erected, dark but not lacking in irony. The setting, both inside and outside the assaulted building, is deliberately and intelligently vague: the semi-empty precinct is as bleak as the deserted neighborhood surrounding it, the criminals are mere impersonal puppets turning into silent shadows during the nighttime guerrilla. The protagonists themselves have no past, are not importantly delineated, they're just people brought together by chance, sharing the pure spirit of self-preservation.

The psychological aspect, almost always present in Carpenter's films, is not based on intellectual or existential dialogues, but is represented by the tension deriving from the persistent stalemate situation, by the certainty of being isolated from any help while awaiting the final charge. In this work, a broken glass somewhere in the dark, or simply the nighttime silence, are more meaningful than the almost poor screenplay. As always, the soundtrack was directly composed by the director, to draw an even more personal nightmare.

Highly successful and rightly remembered is the part of Napoleon Wilson, already sentenced to death who still decides to fight, not to redeem his past actions, but simply out of instinct.

A great and genuine feature film, which will always remain sadly relegated to the role of "film for enthusiasts," especially noting the trend of today's cinema, where shattered heads and visual and auditory vulgarities are the new dogmas.