ESCAPE FROM L.A.: Your Rules are Really Beginning to Annoy Me

Escape from L.A. (1996) – Directed by John Carpenter – Starring Kurt Russell, Stacy Keach, Steve Buscemi, Peter Fonda, Georges Corraface, Cliff Robertson, Valeria Golina, Pam Grier, Michelle Forbes, Bruce Campbell, A.J. Langer, Leland Orser, Robert Carradine, and Breckin Meyer.

I think it’s a cinematic crime we don’t have at least 8 Snake Plissken movies.

That’s not to say ESCAPE FROM L.A. is perfect, because it’s anything but perfect (or close to perfect, or close to close to perfect), but there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had from watching Kurt Russell walk around a dystopian Los Angeles shooting things and grunting threatening pronouncements.

In the context of dystopian films, ESCAPE FROM LA has the visual misfortunate to have been created in the 1990s, thus allowing it neither the coolness factor of being made in the ’70s nor the benefits of being a contemporary film. The result is an odd look; where the original ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK has that late ’70s sci-fi vibe to it, and a movie like Doomsday or 28 Days Later can pull off a more realistic look, L.A. just feels phony. Where the first film made me feel like Snake was being dropped into a real place, this time around it feels like Snake has walked onto a movie set.

The great thing about most of John Carpenter’s ’70s/early ’80s work is that his worlds and characters always felt real. Whether that was a product of the time or Carpenter being forced to get creative with his budget, I believed in those places. In L.A., the budget isn’t a problem but the result is disappointing, as if the extra money went for things that aren’t important: a better car for the bad guy to drive around in, nicer clothes for Snake to wear, and more names in the cast.

I get that it’s cool to see Peter Fonda, Pam Grier, and Bruce Campbell in throwaway roles, but none of them really add anything of import to the film.

It’s been a long time since New York and Snake (Russell) conveniently gets captured just when the government needs him again. The President’s daughter (A.J. Langer) has been seduced by rebel leader Cuervo Jones (Georges Carraface) into giving him the control device for a secret government, and they want to send Snake in to get the control device. The President (Cliff Robertson) is super right-wing and doesn’t give a crap about his daughter. Snake doesn’t want to do it, of course, because he’s a grumpy bad-ass (still wearing his Zubaz pants), but they drug him and tell him he’s got 24 hours to get the antidote from them or he’ll die.

Because we can’t have a movie without Snake accepting, Snake takes a one-person submersible into L.A., and then has a series of dystopian vignettes on his way to get the control device.

None of the scenes are anything spectacular, and the fun in watching them comes as much from going, “Oh, look, Steve Buscemi,” “Hey, what’s up, Uncle Ben? Does May know your daughter was on My So Called Life?,” “Is that Bruce Campbell under all those prosthetics?,” and “Oh, look, that woman from Big Top Pee Wee-slash-Hot Shots-slash-Rain Man!” as it does from anything that happens. As I mentioned, it doesn’t feel like Snake is actually walking across L.A. but from Soundstage 4 to Soundstage 5.

Truthfully, few of the actors here (as fine as they are) really hit the right vibe for a movie like ESCAPE FROM L.A. Luckily, Kurt Russell does, and it’s Russell’s total commitment to playing Snake that makes L.A. an enjoyable watch.

Enjoyable but forgettable. There’s nothing here that sticks with me. I wish it were better. I wish there were more Plissken movies so I could say, “ESCAPE FROM L.A. is enjoyable but forgettable, and given the existence of 7 other Plissken movies, I don’t know why I’d choose to watch this one, again. But there aren’t, so I’ll probably watch this film a bunch more.

Heck, what I really want in lieu of more films would be to spend the next year writing 7 Plissken novels.

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Addendum: I’ve read and re-read this review a few times now and while I’m not very happy with it, I really don’t know what to do with it. As I like to say, I write reactions more than reviews, so what I end up talking about here at the Anxiety is whatever a film creates in me as a reaction, and every so often you get a film like ESCAPE FROM L.A. that’s biggest reaction is little more than a collective shrug.

There are much better John Carpenter movies. There are much better Kurt Russell movies. There are much better Steve Buscemi movies, Peter Fonda movies, Pam Grier movies, Cliff Robertson, Valeria Golina, Bruce Campbell, Robert Carradine, and Breckin Meyer movies. There are much better dystopian movies.

There’s a better Snake Plissken movie.

GHOSTS OF MARS: Tide’s Up. Time to Stay Alive.

Ghosts of Mars (2001) – Directed by John Carpenter – Starring Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, Pam Grier, Clea DuVall, and Joanna Cassidy.

Look, I have a lot of love for John Carpenter. I think his passion for film is every bit as strong as any other American cinematic auteur, and there’s so much passion in the way he makes movies that I can overlook a lot of the lack of refinement.

GHOSTS OF MARS puts that to the test.

This is a movie that was released in 2001 – and not because it was found in a vault with leftover films from the 1970s. But that’s what it looks like, with special effects that look decidedly old school. Maybe that was the intent or maybe that’s all they had in the budget, but for the first time in his career, Carpenter’s work feels a bit too anachronistic to overcome.

If the story, the dialogue, and the acting were exceptional, of course, I could get past the weak model work, but they’re all lacking, and for all of GHOSTS looking like a movie 20 years older than it actually is, it’s that failure of story, of dialogue, and of acting that sinks this film.

The plot is simple enough – Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) is a member of a police unit assigned to pick up prisoner Desolation Williams (Ice Cube). The team includes leader Helena Braddock (Pam Grier), new addition Nathan Jericho (Jason Statham), and two younger officers: Kincaid and Descanso (Clea Duvall and Liam White). They get into a train to head on out to the mining town prison where Williams is being held. When they arrive, the town is deserted except for a few deranged miners and some prisoners. It turns out the miners have been infected with a red cloud of badness full of disembodied spirits.

Williams’ crew tricks Jericho into letting them inside the prison, where they turn on the cops to let Williams out, except that Ballard locks them all up, which leads to Williams and Ballard cutting a deal. Then the cops and robbers team up to kill the possessed miners, who are more than happy to try and kill them back.

If you just talk it out, the story seems perfectly suitable, but for some reason Carpenter has decided to clunk up his film with all manner of flashbacks. The movie opens at the end of this mining colony adventure, as Ballard is the only person on the returning train. She’s called in for questioning and then tells us the inquisition panel her story. Which is fine, except that when we get into the story, the people inside it give us more flashbacks and it just gets too repetitive. It bogs the film down. Case in point – when the cops arrive at the mining colony, the team splits up. We stick with Ballard and Jericho and then later when they reconnect with Descanso, he relates what happened to him and we see it through a flashback.

Why? What’s wrong with following along with two subplots at the same time? Why get all of one, and then get all of the other one, when the two events were happening concurrently?

The characters are a problem, too, a condition that’s not helped by the acting. Statham is a decent enough actor, but Jericho is a horrid character, more interested in trying to get laid than anything else, even in the middle of a mission. Ice Cube is fine playing the sneering bad ass, but we’re told that Williams is this ultimate bad ass and then we never see it. Is Carpenter engaging in a critique of the Age of Hyperbole that we’re living in, or is it just a stupidly conceived character?

It’s the latter, I’m guessing.

The biggest problem is Henstridge’s Ballard, however. Cube at least has some real charisma to help him power through this role and overcome the script’s deficiencies, but Henstridge is a weak actress playing a weak character. That Ballard says stupid things is on Carpenter; that Henstridge delivers most of her lines as if she memorized them 10 minutes before the performance is on her. It’s a completely wooden performance in a film that’s desperately crying out for a charismatic lead. Maybe it wouldn’t have ultimately made a huge difference in the film, but if Cube and Henstridge switched roles, I think we would’ve seen an improvement.

There’s just so little chemistry anywhere in GHOSTS OF MARS that it makes for a hard watch. Now, there’s plenty of killing and action, so if you like post-apocalyptic movies, GHOSTS OF MARS will probably do the trick as a way to spend 90 minutes of your life and not feel totally cheated. (Well, it will probably do half the trick, but you get the meaning.) It’s not a horrible movie, but it’s certainly not a good one. Carpenter didn’t deserve to disappear for an entire decade (coming back with 2011′s The Ward) but he needs stronger material than GHOSTS to allow his strengths as a director to really come through.

THE WARD: Alice Hoffman is Trying to Kill Us

The Ward (2011) – Directed by John Carpenter – Starring Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Laura Leigh, Lyndsy Fonseca, Mika Boorem, and Jared Harris.

THE WARD is John Carpenter’s first movie in ten years … and this is where I’m supposed to say something snarky like, “He should have waited another ten if he was going to come back for this. Am I right?”

The truth is, THE WARD isn’t a great movie but it’s a decent movie, and it’s good to have Carpenter back making full-length features. While THE WARD doesn’t rank with his finest efforts, it’s still a solid psychological horror flick about a girl named Kristen (Amber Heard) who gets consigned to a mental ward which is haunted by a ghost named Alice (Mika Boorem).

Kristen burns down a house, gets picked up by the cops, and gets sent to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital, where she meets the other girls in the ward: Artsy Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca), Vain Sarah (Danielle Panabaker), Protective Emily (Mamie Gummer), and Baby-Like Zoey (Laura Leigh). Kristen gets put in Tammy’s old room, and what we know and she doesn’t is that Tammy was killed by a ghost that we eventually learn is Alice.

While Kristen is on the ward, we’re engaged in trying to watch her escape, in watching Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris) do some psychiatric exams, in getting to know the girls, and in watching the ghost start to pick them off one-by-one. All of this is fairly standard fare for a horror flick and while Carpenter films it all with professional aplomb.

But.

But it just doesn’t feel like a Carpenter flick. It feels like any of a 100 directors could have directed this middle sequence. It’s completely solid but there’s none of that great, solid character interaction that makes Carpenter flicks so special. And yet … THE WARD isn’t bad. Carpenter knows how to pace a film and this movie is no exception. I like Kristen’s insistence that she’s not crazy and her determination to get the heck out of this place. Amber Heard is an impressive young actress and she plays Kristen as a well-rounded character who’s strong enough to keep pushing herself to escape and yet not so foolishly strong that she’s not scared out of her mind when she gets taken to electro-shock therapy.

The interaction between the girls and the orderlies and Dr. Stringer and the Alice ghost is pretty good but it’s also largely forgettable.

Things pick up when the girls finally admit to Kristen that the mysterious Alice used to be a patient here but she was really mean to all of them, so they ganged up on her and killed her, and now Alice is out for revenge. It’s a nice twist, muddying up how we think of the girls and how they interact with one another, and it imbues the ghost with a real purpose and motivation for killing these girls.

There’s a second, even better twist coming when we find out that all of these girls are actually the SAME girl: they’re all Alice Hoffman, including Kristen. Kristen has been having these flashes of a little girl tied up in a basement and we discover that girl is Alice. She was kidnapped and abused for 2 months in the house that we saw Kristen burning at the start of the movie, and Alice then splintered her psyche into all these component parts. It’s a cool play on our expectations as an audience; we expect to see a bunch of different types of people in an ensemble cast like this, so we don’t question how each of them seem to be completely different. When Kristen finds out that she’s just one part of a greater whole and has to die for Alice to become whole, I thought it was a pretty good revelation and a pretty good twist that now the ghost that’s been killing the girls is actually the hero. When she kills a girl, it’s because Alice has learned how to integrate that portion of her self back into the whole.

While not a great film and not a signature John Carpenter film, THE WARD is still a solid watch; Carpenter is much better at the character bits than the scary bits and I’m totally fine with that. When I reviewed Drive Angry, I made a big deal about how completely stunningly gorgeous Amber Heard is, but she’s a really good young actress, too. Just like with Drive Angry, she’s better than the material she’s got to work with here, and just like with Drive Angry, Heard’s strength is that she elevates the actors and film around her.