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.

———-

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.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: The Survival of the Human Race, Something You Don’t Give a Sh*t About

Escape from New York (1981) – Directed by John Carpenter – Starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Season Hubley, and Tom Atkins.

As a kid, I wasn’t a huge fan of John Carpenter movies but I’ve gained a real appreciation for Carpenter over the years because I think he makes movies the way I would have made movies if I was making movies in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Like Robert Rodriguez, Carpenter is a guy whose films are infused with more passion and concept than narrative brilliance.

Take a gander at the scene in ESCAPE when Snake Plissken (Russell) is brought in to see Commissioner Hauk (Van Cleef). Hauk is sitting behind his desk like he’s the guy in charge, and Snake is standing just inside the doorway in cuffs, waiting to find out what Hauk wants. Snake’s upper body is hidden in shadow. Why? Because it looks cool. That’s it. We’ve already seen Plissken’s face led into the prison in cuffs and seen him growl, so there’s absolutely nothing to gain from obscuring his face in this scene.

Except it looks cool.

I think this is one of the reasons why Rodriguez’s Grindhouse film (Planet Terror) is so much better than Tarantino’s half (Death Proof) – Tarantino’s love of the genre feels more analytical while Rodriguez’s feels more primal. It’s like Tarantino-

Yeah, I should probably save that for those reviews, eh?

When ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK inevitably gets remade 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, it’ll have a budget of $200 million, bigger explosions, and proper lighting, but I hope it’s not sanitized. ESCAPE feels very real because it feels like a live-in world, and it works because everyone commits to playing their part to the limit. Russell doggedly sneers, Van Cleef is doggedly always in charge, Ernest Borgnine is doggedly loopy, and Adrienne Barbeau is doggedly always about to fall out of her top.

Carpenter might not have massive budgets (was $6 million a lot in 1983?) but look at that cast he’s assembled: Russell, Van Cleef, Borgnine, Pleasence, Hayes, Barbeau, Harry Dean Stanton … my friends and I always used to play this game back in high school where we were always casting our dream movie. You never overloaded it with stars because the goal was to show off how awesome you are. It was the highest praise one could hang on an actor when we’d say, “If I was making a movie, Judd Hirsch would have to be in it.”

That’s seemingly how Carpenter cast ESCAPE – everyone in it is awesome. (It’s like the exact opposite way of how James Cameron casts every one of his parts that’s not either in Aliens or named Michael Biehn.) None of these roles are particularly juicy but all of them are memorable.

The set-up of ESCAPE is stupid but set-ups don’t matter in these post-apocalyptic films. The island of Manhattan has been turned into a prison because World War III is going on and crime has jumped 400% and … yeah, turning Manhattan into a prison makes total sense. Well, it doesn’t, but ESCAPE FROM CLEVELAND doesn’t have the same ring.

Did you catch that World War III was going on? Well, the President (Pleasence) is in Air Force One and is, for some reason, flying close enough to New York that when the stewardess, who belongs to a left-wing terrorist organization called, um, the People’s Front of Judea or something, hijacks the plane (I’m gonna put the blame for that on the Secret Service more than Human Resources) and crashes the plane into a building, the President jumps into Air Force One’s large, orange egg of an escape pod to save himself and the magical cassette tape he carries. The Duke finds and captures the President, cuts off his finger as proof that he has him, and then demands freedom in exchange for the President’s life.

It’s not the deepest plan ever concocted but it’s about as good as you’re gonna get from a dude who puts ceiling light fixtures on the hood of his car.

The whole set-up, the whole World War III angle, the President being captured, the fact that they have the secrets of nuclear fusion on an honest-to-god cassette tape that looks like they got from an intern who had a mix of Foghat and Rainbow classics on the floor of his Camaro and could bare to part with it, is completely immaterial to the film. All that matters is Kurt Russell going into a post-apocalyptic looking New York to get something out and a bunch of crazy people are going to try and stop him.

The only idea that matters is that Manhattan is a prison, that no one (not even guards) is ever allowed inside, and that the prisoners are left to their own devices.

That idea is awesome.

Snake Plissken was arrested because he was trying to rob the Federal Reserve and that makes him something of a celebrity inside the prison. People keep saying, “I thought you were dead,” so at least all of these hardened criminals are still watching the news when they’re not turning New York into a big sh*thouse.

The President wears a monitor bracelet because the film needs to have a way to track him, so Snake tracks him into this abandoned theater where people are putting on some old-fashioned music hall singing from the early 1900s. Think about that for a second – we’ve got the worst of the worst criminals trapped inside this city prison and a bunch of them decide, “Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if we found some outfits from the 1930s and sign and dance?” Right. I think OZ did that exact episode.

Doesn’t matter if it’s logical, because it’s awesome.

Snakes finds the President’s monitor but it’s now on another dude’s wrist, and that sets the rest of the plot in motion – Snake looks for the President, makes an uneasy alliance with “the Brain,” an old acquaintance who left Snake to die but now gets to shag Adrienne Barbeau, and wars with the Duke. There are fights and explosions and betrayals.

Carpenter pulls it all off with aplomb in a tightly made 100 minutes. Everyone is just as good as you want them to be and as a result, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is a fun, action-packed ride.