For starters, Hawke is a drug addict who stops caring about his job after a bust goes awry. His Detroit Police Department is as dirty as a contestant on "Fear Factor." And Laurence Fishburne plays a crime kingpin who — bear with me — a. has killed a cop, b. but it was in self-defense, c. plus, the cop was dirty, and d. Fishburne is jailed in Hawke's about-to-be-demolished precinct house when the place is surrounded and the two of them have to unite with a handful of others to defend themselves against a mysterious, better-armed militia.

"Assault on Precinct 13" is the sort of efficient, suspenseful melodrama Hollywood cranked out like crazy (it's a remake of a 1976 John Carpenter film) before TV took over the police genre. The premise takes awhile to set up, but it's a tight one, allowing for virtually nonstop action and frequent shifts in the balance of power in the precinct (others there include Brian Dennehy as a veteran cop who's justifiably suspicious of Fishburne, Drea de Matteo as a tough secretary and John Leguizamo, overacting shamelessly).

There are a few holes here: This precinct is quite near downtown Detroit, so how could no one notice the gunfire and explosions there? And is there really a forest in Detroit?

But "Assault" is a testament to how a talented cast can persuade us to believe in dicey situations (for a look at the reverse, check out "Flight of the Phoenix," which skimped on the casting budget and got what it paid for).

The other thing that keeps us hooked is the film's troubling moral universe, which works as a metaphor for our own troubling moral universe, with its shady heroes and villains. "Assault's" Detroit is the civic equivalent of a grimy toilet with snipers in it, a place where no one is untainted by evil and doubt.