“Assault on Precinct 13” is the best B-movie of the year. But that’s not saying much considering how rare the traditional B-movie has become. Also, it’s January.

Ethan Hawke plays Sgt. Jake Roenick, a down-and-out cop stuck at a rundown precinct in the cesspool known as Detroit. It’s New Year’s Eve and Roenick is on duty with a few fellow cops.

Marion Bishop, the baddest cop killer alive (Laurence Fishburne), finally has been captured across town. Along with a few mid-level criminals, Bishop is being transferred across the state in the middle of a horrible snowstorm. The weather becomes too much, forcing the bus to stop at Roenick’s precinct – a precinct too old to hold such a high-profile prisoner.

From the film title, we know this precinct will be attacked, but by whom? Is it simply Bishop’s goons trying to break him out, or is it an entirely larger conspiracy waiting to be unraveled by Roenick? We know that instead of creating original “one man against an army” films, Hollywood is now digging up old B-thrillers and remaking them – all to profit from a terror-stricken American public.

Today, it is the common man under terrorist attack. We sit in office buildings while Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen plot to kill us using creative artillery and millions of dollars.

Like us, Roenick sits innocently in his rundown precinct, desperately trying to defend himself from an advanced enemy without giving into the demands. A slapped-together government conspiracy proves this movie was released to target the scared. Don’t be fooled – movies like “Assault on Precinct 13” are made to capitalize on your fears, not to provide you with the confidence to be the next Todd Beamer.

But as far as B-movies go, “Precinct 13” is one of the better ones, providing enough thrills to entertain typical audiences for more than a few hours. On the other hand, the film is full of the all-too-familiar character clichés.

Among them is a female gangbanger who never committed a crime. Her dialogue includes lines such as, “Somein’ suspect is goin’ on. I wanna know what the funk it is!” Then there’s Smiley (Ja Rule), the con artist/thief who constantly refers to himself in the third person. There’s an annoying junkie (John Leguizamo), the slutty secretary (Drea de Matteo), the one-day-from-retirement cop (Brian Dennehy), the soft-spoken bad-ass villain Bishop and the drunken, recovering cop Roenick.

A scenario like this reminded me of an episode of “The Simpsons” where Mr. Burns visits the Mayo Clinic. The doctors tell him that instead of attacking his immune system, his many diseases are fighting each other. In other words, his battling diseases leave him in pretty good health. Herein lies one rare filmmaking lesson – sometimes a dump truck full of clichés can actually help your weak-minded film survive.

“Precinct 13” is not a simple remake; it draws reference to countless cop classics. By setting the film in Detroit, and with its extremely frantic opening segment, director Jean-Francois Richet is begging for a comparison to Joe Carnahan’s “Narc.” Richet utilizes the same nasty greens to simulate nasty fluorescent lighting. Cinematographer Robert Gantz falls into the same shaky steadycam work.

With a much more typical, by-the-book script, “Precinct 13” can’t provide the same meaningful blows of Carnahan’s brooding “Narc.” But it doesn’t need it. While movies such as “Narc” want us to walk away moved, movies like “Precinct 13” want us to walk away with a smile.

Don’t wait to be impressed, and you might just find yourself having a good time.