Edgewater Hotel Sign Comes Down
Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Vandalist: My Dog's Name Is "Shadow"
Todd Barry a Not-So Excitable Boy
Skin Deep
Toronto's extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn't always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.
The Taking of Pelham 123 remake got us thinking about pointless-but-passable remakes of 1970s flicks with numbers in the title, and that got us to thinking of 2005's Assault on Precinct 13.
It's a pretty straight-up actioner with a surprisingly decent cast (Ethan Hawke! Lawrence Fishburne!), and it represents yet another attempt to make Toronto look like Detroit. All things considered, it does a decent job.
The short summary is that super-duper-criminal-badass Lawrence Fishburne is arrested and held at this old, about-to-close police precinct on New Year's Eve. His homies come to free him and chaos ensues.
The precinct interior is a set, of course. We had to peer through the CGI snowflakes to peg the exterior as 121 Industry Street. The building has a rather cool story, having once served as a facility for Ferranti-Packard, makers of electrical transformers. The city bought it a few years ago and turned into the Mount Dennis TTC garage. It was originally going to be part of a railyard for the Eglinton Subway.
We even found this informative mini-movie about all the important industries once located in Weston that left as the community evolved.
The flick starts with undercover dude Ethan Hawke and his partners chasing some drug fiends around an apartment complex. When they burst outside we can see they are at 260 Wellesley Street East...
...and the camera pans up the tower.
Then we find Fishburne getting arrested outside a church. This is actually the landmark St. Andrews Church on King Street and Simcoe.
If you want to appreciate the art of cinematography you can compare the warm pictures of the chapel here to how it looks in Assault.
Hey—is that Gabriel Byrne? Yes! And is that Roy Thomson Hall over his shoulder? Yes, again! Metro Hall, in which this scene was shot, might give the Distillery District a run for its money as our most popular shooting location.
We had fun finding this one. The bus carrying Fishburne and other inmates to the precinct pulls out of this random garage-looking place and turns right. Luckily, we can identify that "EF" sign across the street as belonging to EF International Language Schools on Portland Street.
Despite being in Detroit, the precinct seems to be near a rather large forest, perfectly placed for a thrilling finale. These scenes were shot in Morningside Park.
And there you have it. A typical not-horrible, shot-in-Toronto flick!
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I thought the building just north of the Canary Restaurant was used for the exteriors of this movie. Guess not.
Have you guys covered Detroit Rock City yet? It's so Toronto, it hurts!
Detroit Rock City is the first movie I ever watched where I determined it was shot here without knowing beforehand (I've only lived here for two years so I don't yet have much of a cinematic eagle eye). Let's do it Torontoist!
yokes - they did indeed shoot scenes at 420 Front St. E. In the shot here, it certainly looks like the 121 Industry but given how dark and snowy the movie is it's entirely possible they used the Canary building for other shots of the precinct. It's in there somewhere, anyway.
And Detroit Rock City? Consider it added to the list.
The building is indeed 424 front east. The pictured shot is looking at it from the west: This is a good view. We built temporary additions to the building on the north and east sides of the existing building.
and wait for it - the interior sets were housed at 121 industry st., which we used as a studio. (no exteriors shot there)
The forest was also not Morningside park but a commercial forest north of the city (I can't recall where, just that it was a long drive and there was no cell service.
There was a 1998 made for TV version of The Taking of Pelham 123 that was filmed in Toronto and was really bad. You might want to check that out.
I think the absolute worst offender for attempting to portray Toronto as another city is Jennifer Lopez's Angel Eyes. She plays a Chicago cop and near the beginning of the film she is clearly on the Gardiner Expressway and low and behold, what can you see in the background? Yep - no attempt made to mask it out either. The failed disguises continue throughout this film as well.
Nice article.
You better believe we did Angel Eyes last August.
We should see a Reel Toronto instalment on the 1976 Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor film Silver Streak, in which Toronto stood in for L.A., parts of Kansas City and Chicago. Union Station is the centre piece. Alberta stands in for rural Kansas, while Calgary's skyline stands in for Kansas City's skyline. The Oshawa area stands in for central Illinois, south of Chi-Town.