MC
Marco Castellini
•The violence of the gangs that rage in Los Angeles is such that the police decide to close its district number 13 in the outskirts of the city. Inside, there are only two passing detainees, two policewomen, a lieutenant, and an agent. Before closing and transporting the criminals to another police station, the district is attacked by a gang of bloodthirsty criminals who have only one goal: to kill all the occupants of the station. Between jailers and detainees, a relationship of solidarity is established in the common intention of saving their lives. Violent, crude, and direct like few films, this debut of Carpenter is truly remarkable. In "District 13" we already find many of the situations dear to his cinema: the siege of the refuge ("Prince of Darkness"), forced cohabitation inside a closed place ("The Thing"), different characters who unite their forces in the common intention of surviving ("Ghosts of Mars"), urban discomfort and chaos ("1997: Escape from New York"). Particularly impactful is the sequence in which a little girl is killed in cold blood with a point-blank shot by a young criminal, a scene almost always "censored" in the television broadcasts of the film.
