Rated (M) Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne

This remake of John Carpenter's 1976 film of the same name is an example of taking your stock-standard, biff-em-up action script and inserting A-grade actors to deliver the lines.

Sergeant Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) is on duty on New Year's Eve at one of Detroit's oldest precinct houses when a snow blizzard forces a prison bus to unload its unsavoury cargo at the nearest precinct - Roenick's - until morning. Roenick, still traumatised from a bungled undercover sting in which he lost his two partners, isn't happy about interrupting the evening's quiet revelry, and nor are his fellow police staff (Brian Dennehy and Drea de Matteo). Especially not given that one of the prisoners is Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne), a mobster due to reveal in court the corrupt travails of an elite drug squad.

When two masked gunmen carrying police badges are caught breaking into the precinct, it's soon obvious that drug squad chief Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne) is determined not to let Bishop, or anyone else in the precinct, leave alive. A tense stand-off ensues as Roenick is forced to team up with his new prisoners in an urban dogfight against crooked cops.

Erin Tennant