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Out of 5:

'Assault on Precinct 13' is like a meal at a family steak house — you know exactly what you're going to get. Hardly creative, daring or innovative, it gets the job done without much fuss. And you'll probably have forgotten about it within an hour.

A straightforward action piece that eschews CG-effects and cutting-edge flair for good ol' fashioned pyrotechnics, gunfire and car crashes presented in a rough, workmanlike fashion, Jean-François Richet's film feels like it's stuck in the 70s.

Which isn't exactly surprising, considering the director's concerted efforts to recreate that decade's visceral, realistic style. The fact that this is a remake of a 1976 film would also explain a lot. Granted, the plot of John 'Halloween' Carpenter's original (people trapped in an abandoned police station are under attack by a street gang) has been tweaked with new characters and story elements, but the basic premise remains completely unchanged — besieged convicts and cops must team up against an invading force.

In James DeMonaco's script, which recalls his work on 'The Negotiator', crime lord and cop killer Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) is being transported to jail with several other criminals. But, as we've come to expect, a snowstorm strands the prison bus at the remote, rundown Precinct 13 — on skeleton staff due to its imminent closure.

Their arrival puts a dampener on the New Years' Eve celebrations of Sergeant Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) and his two co-workers, but festivities get back on track as soon as the prisoners are thrown into the police station's cells. Until, that is, two masked gunmen break in and attack the prison guards from the bus.

Although it's a classic set-up allowing for plenty of explosions, shattering glass and blood, Richet hasn't gone for relentless, over-the-top action. There's some focus on characters — they actually speak to each other.

Yet, despite the presence of talented actors like Hawke, Fishburne and John Leguizamo, these characters aren't fleshed out enough to sustain proceedings. And, even worse, DeMonaco has resorted to clichés. There's the tortured, burnt-out cop numbing his guilt with drink and drugs, who, in the face of danger, pulls himself together into the kickass crimefighting machine he once was. The criminals are equally stock characters, doing little but add tension within the precinct — it's only Fishburne, as their reluctant leader, who truly shines.

And just as threadbare as the characters, is the plot — after all how much can you do with a siege situation. Of course there are the prerequisite face-offs inside the precinct as the armed convicts threaten to turn on their allies-of-necessity, the cops.

But even though, within the first 15 minutes, you know way too much, DeMonaco has injected his script with enough little twists along the way — and a slightly larger one at the end — to keep you interested. Providing the most remarkable surprises, though, is the unflinching way he bumps off characters despite the stature of the actors playing them.

When coupled with Richet's gritty, immediate style of filming standard action set-pieces you're left with a solid, if wholly unremarkable piece of work reminding you that films put together with hammer and nails can still outdo those hollow, glitzy extravaganzas created on computer, and yes, that would be you 'xXx2'.