One of the most obvious facets of Hollywood is that it likes to digest itself every couple of decades. This is done in either of two ways.

It portrays its “classical” years as a complete and utter triumph of artistic achievement, as was seen in this year’s “The Aviator,” and it remakes movies as much as possible, such as Jonathan Demme’s “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Hollywood even goes as far as taking little films made outside of their realm and turning them into big blockbusters. “Assault on Precinct 13” falls into this second category of remakes.

Originally made by John Carpenter two years before his breakthrough with “Halloween,” this newer version takes a tiny B-movie with no-name actors and incorporates big budget, big names – or has-beens – and a sleek finish.

Remakes like these usually become either disastrous failures, the most recent of which was last year’s “The Ladykillers,” or only moderately successful, “Walking Tall,” for example.

With this in mind, there is substantial critique against “Assault.” It is big, sleek and star-studded and does not take much away from an obvious B-movie.

But there is also a lot going for it because of these attributes. The story is simple. During a blizzard on New Year’s Eve, Precinct 13 is shutting its doors for good. Sergeant Roenick (Ethan Hawke) and two other cops remain to pack everything up. Just before the stroke of midnight, a bus transporting prisoners makes an emergency stop at P-13 because of the snow.

Of particular importance is bus passenger Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne), a big name crime boss recently apprehended by the police.

Soon afterward, big black trucks arrive and lay siege to the precinct. They are not Bishop’s gang members but rather cops trying to kill him because he has connections to dozens of crooked cops.

The rest of the movie is the siege, as the bad cops try again and again to kill the good cops, who must eventually align themselves with their prisoners in order to survive.

The typical clichés abound, such as the cop nearing retirement (Brian Dennehy), the sassy slut cop secretary (Drea de Matteo), the troubled Sarge (Hawke) and the thug prisoner (Ja Rule).

These are stereotypes put to their full effect, and in an interesting way, they address each other as their roles, i.e. “Secretary” or “Sergeant” or “Junkie.”

There is not any particularly good acting but sustained decent acting, except in John Leguizamo’s completely annoying drug addict character.

Overall, though, the film is a mild success because of the action scenes and the suspense moments that lead up to them. It is completely formulaic and typical but is still done well.

For example, there is lots of gunplay, explosions and cool ways of bad people dying. Surprisingly, the film is also very cynical in the treatment of human life, which is a nice transfer from the earlier film.

The most frustrating aspects of the film, however, are the dialogue and editing.

If you like circuitous logic and cliché-riddled monologues, then this is the movie for you. If not, it is best to plug your ears until you hear a gunshot.

The action sequences, while loaded with violence, are also hastily shot to a fault. Putting dark lighting, fast action and extremely jerky camera movements together does not induce excitement but rather confusion and nausea as evident in “The Blair Witch Project.”

But all in all, this film is a good way to spend two hours despite its insistence on sticking to convention.

Jason Bolte can be reached at [email protected].