Now THIS is how you make a proper remake of a John Carpenter picture. In fact, it might be the best John Carpenter movie that JC never shot.
John Carpenter is a God to the French cinema-buffs, and how finely crafted this ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13-influenced picture is, it makes the previous remakes of Carpenter's movies, including the surefire-suck ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK remake, what they are: Shit stains.
THE NEST is really 3 stories, with 3 destinies intertwined at this one warehouse. A criminal crew trying to rob a truckload of electronics from the warehouse, some bored guards of the warehouse, and an armored police van transporting the most vicious Albanian gangster alive who are forced to make safe-haven at the same warehouse.
They are all beseieged by the gangster's army of endless-number of mercs trying to free him, and kill everyone else inside.
Really, unlike the "official" remake, THE NEST works so insanely well because of the same narrative-lessons that had worked for Carpenter's original AOP13.
Such lessons include the slow build-up that gives the heroes a chance to be fleshed out, so that when the war does begin, we care about the fates of our heroes. Hell, if my clock is right, for the 107 minute action movie, the "action" doesn't start until 40 minutes into the film. Its a testament to the skill of the filmmakers behind THE NEST that those 67 other minutes are intense as fuck.
Plus, I give absolute credit to them for actually making me guess who would ultimately survive.
Hell, even care for those that don't make it, they get proper endings. While that "official" remake had people dropping like flies and you the audience not giving a damn, THE NEST even made the required "chicken shit" character of such siege tales not job out.
I think its most Carpenter-esque quality is that the villains resemble the faceless evils that wrecked terror in Carpenter's early movies. Like Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN, the street gang in the original AOP13, the ghost pirates in THE FOG, and the monster in THE THING, these villains for THE NEST resemble more like giant killer insects with their nightvision goggles than people (which is quite deliberate).
Maybe the best telling of why this movie rocks is that there is a split-second decision for the security guard who gets beaten up by the robbers, but then hours later forced to fight with them to the bitter end. No nonsense scenes of him complaining about helping criminals or being "recruited" by the heroes. None of that bullshit. He makes his decision when he sees the mercs outside on the security monitors. That alone was enough to convert him.
