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.

DAREDEVIL: How Do You Kill A Man Without Fear?

Daredevil (2003; Director’s Cut) – Directed by Mark Steven Johnson – Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jon Favreau, Joe Pantoliano, David Keith, Leland Orser, Erick Avari, Ellen Pompeo, Derrick O’Connor, Jude Ciccolella, Kevin Smith, Frank Miller, and Stan Lee.

If you haven’t seen the Director’s Cut of DAREDEVIL, then you haven’t seen DAREDEVIL, because the Director’s Cut is thisclose to being included among the best of all the Marvel movies.

When the theatrical release hit theaters back in 2003, I went and watched it, and kinda liked it. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t think it was bad, and I didn’t think many of the arrows people were slinging at the film were fair: the costume, the water coffin, the fact that Michael Clarke Duncan is black. I never thought the costume was a major drawback, I thought the water coffin was actually a decent idea, and I’m much more interested in actors getting the spirit of a character than I am concerned with nailing the look.

There were other problems with the theatrical cut, however, as the emphasis on the Elektra (Jennifer Garner) subplot turned DAREDEVIL into a more traditional superhero movie and robbed the film of what made Daredevil unique. I don’t think alteration of source material is, in and of itself, a bad thing, and Daredevil has, at various stages in his comic book life, been portrayed in a more traditionally superheroic sense, so it’s not the portrayal itself that bothers me, but that in doing so, it put DAREDEVIL in the company of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men and X2, and in comparison to those films, Mark Steven Johnson’s theatrical take on the Man Without Fear fell short.

The Director’s Cut, however, offers a darker, more serious, more unique superhero story, and is much better for it. We’ve become so accustomed to movie studios slapping “Director’s Cut” on DVDs and Blu-rays where the movie isn’t noticeably different than the theatrical cut that we’ve almost become inoculated to the idea that the Director’s Cut could be something significantly different, and DAREDEVIL’s Director’s Cut is a definite and significant improvement. Because the film had a lukewarm reception on its release, the film has slipped through the cracks a bit, and the release of the Director’s Cut hasn’t fully impacted the cultural perception of this movie, and as a result I am pretty comfortable in saying that the Director’s Cut of DAREDEVIL currently stands as the most under-appreciated superhero movie ever made.

I love DAREDEVIL, and the reasons why it falls just short of the very best superhero movies is the execution of the idea in several spots, and not the idea, itself.

How could DAREDEVIL has been just that little bit better? Ben Affleck could be who he is now, as an actor, instead of who he was then. Colin Farrell could have toned down Bullseye’s kewl and been more the driven killer that he is in the second half of the movie. Mark Steven Johnson could have had his movie shot with a little more grit and a little less slick. And Jennifer Garner …

I am not a totally unkind person, and if doing this movie is where Affleck and Garner fell in love … well, if the trade off for love is a bad performance, then that is a small price to pay. But it doesn’t alter my belief that Garner’s performance here is simply not very good, and the de-emphasis of her character in the longer Director’s Cut helps to make DAREDEVIL a better film.

DAREDEVIL opens in the present, with a busted up Daredevil clinging to the cross on top of a church. He lowers himself in and the cathedral’s priest (Derrick O’Connor) offers him some comfort before we drop into an extended flashback that gives us Matt Murdock’s origin as a child. As anyone who’s been reading these reviews knows, I’m not overly fond of origin stories, yet the presentation here is exceedingly well done. What helps is that the story of young Matt (Scott Terra) is a self-contained story about a boy, his dad, and a fateful decision by the father to buck the mob. David Keith is excellent as Jack Murdock, a down on his luck fighter that’s been working for the mob as an enforcer. When Matt catches him roughing someone up, he runs away and gets blinded by radioactive chemicals. Father and son make a bond with each other to start attacking life, and this thread ends with Jack refusing to throw a fight, which gets him killed.

It’s a concisely told, effectively rendered short story at the beginning of the film, and it does an excellent job setting not only the violent tone for what follows, but also demonstrates there’s a real consequence to people’s actions.

Cut to the near present where the bulk of the film takes place. We don’t return to the moment in the church that we left and the film doesn’t end on that moment, either. Now, that’s not a huge break in chronology, but it helps to give DAREDEVIL a little something extra in the presentation of the narrative.

The primary difference between the Director’s Cut and the theatrical cut is the inclusion of a subplot that features Coolio and Jude Ciccolella. While it doesn’t dramatically alter the film because of how it enhances the scenes that made the theatrical cut, it adds to the overall tone of the film by having an honest-to-goodness legal subplot. No longer is Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson bit players in Daredevil’s film, but they’re actual characters in the larger story. It’s important to see the Matt persona at work, as it increases the tension between what he does as a member of the Court and what he does as a vigilante. With all of these extra legal scenes put into the narrative, we get a much greater sense of Matt’s frustrations with the legal system.

There’s a fantastic scene between Matt and Officer McKensie where Matt loses it. He uses his increased sense of hearing to help determine if people are lying by listening to their heartbeat, and he’s frustrated at how both his client (Coolio) and the main witness against him (Ciccolella) are telling different versions of the same story, yet both appear to be telling the truth. Matt goes after McKensie, but as Matt and not Daredevil. The officer is obviously confused about being roughed up by the blind attorney, but after Matt bangs up his car and rips open McKensie’s shirt, he sees a scar that tells him the cop has a pacemaker, and thus his heartbeat wouldn’t be affected by lying.

It’s good stuff and it shows the failing of a superpower, something that’s not often done unless it’s a total breakdown in powers. This isn’t that; instead, Matt’s powers are in full effect, but they fail him because he’s become over-reliant on them. It’s a small touch but it adds a nice sense of pathos to the film without taking control of the narrative.

At a coffee shop one morning, Matt and Foggy (Jon Favreau) are having their morning jolt, arguing about the alleged veracity of Daredevil and giant alligators in the sewers of New York. There’s great chemistry between Favreau and Affleck, and one of the film’s better touches is how Foggy will try to lie and trick Matt by using Matt’s blindness against him, suck as when he tricks Matt into dumping mustard into his coffee. The trick is on Foggy, of course, as Matt is fully aware of what his friend is trying to pull, and when the opportunity presents itself in the arrival of Elektra Natchios (Garner), Matt switches their cups so Foggy gets the mustard blend.

Matt decides to try his hand at flirting with Elektra, who’s not having any of it. Matt pursues her down the street, where they engage in some painful banter and then do a much more effective form of banter when they start punching and kicking each other over a kid’s playground. On the whole, the scene doesn’t work for me, but what does work is that it’s nice to see that Matt has a life outside of being Daredevil. And yeah, he’s not good at personal relationships, but there’s a genuine spark of life when he goes after Elektra. He’s not doing this as cover, but because he likes chasing after a pretty lady.

Good for him, and good for including that in this film. Mark Steven Johnson doesn’t appear to have any delusions of grandeur here, nor any shame in directing a superhero movie; he’s just trying to tell the very best Daredevil story he can tell.

Matt’s life is interrupted when the Kingpin (Duncan) hires Irish assassin Bullseye (Farrell) to kill Elektra’s dad, who wants out of the criminal business. Bullseye kills Elektra’s dad with Daredevil’s billy club/walking stick/grappling hook, which gets Elektra to think that Daredevil is to blame. With her father dead, Elektra does what every daughter would do in this situation: she goes home, puts on some tight leather, sets up some sandbags, arms herself with a pair of sais, cuts open the sandbags as she’s twirling and kicking around the room, and then goes after Daredevil.

DD, of course, doesn’t want to fight her, but that doesn’t stop Elektra from jamming a sai through his left shoulder, which causes Daredevil to do one of those slow slides down the wall. Matt decides now is the time to pull off his mask (because doing it before would have been silly), and Elektra instantly realizes that Daredevil couldn’t possibly be responsible because … because they made out? … and then Bullseye shows up and kills her. We get a really nice scene of Daredevil and Elektra crawling towards each other as the police move up through the building, and it’s one of the few scenes between them that really works.

The action sequences in the film are solid without being exceptional, though I really like how the film depicts Matt’s radar sense (though I would have gone with a dark red echo effect instead of blue to better fit the film’s color scheme). I do like how Johnson takes advantage of his locations – there’s a fight on the rooftops and another inside a church – but he’s not very adept at showing people punching and kicking each other. The film uses some special effects to make the three principals jump higher and stuff and it looks really silly. Daredevil, Elektra, and Bullseye don’t need to be able to jump to a rooftop no one else can get to in order to be awesome. They’re already/always awesome.

Matt defeats Bullseye in the church fight and then goes after the Kingpin. Duncan is really good as the Kingpin; maybe it’s not the pure Wilson Fisk we’ve seen in the comics, but I love that he’s standing over this film, casting a huge shadow before entering the film as a real physical force in the final act. His dismissive line to his assistant that, “I was raised in the Bronx. This is something you wouldn’t understand,” as he readies himself for Daredevil’s arrival tells us more about the character than all the posturing ever could, just as Matt’s conflict over his Catholicism tells us he feels guilty about his actions as Daredevil much more effectively than him weakly telling a scared kid that, “I’m not the bad guy” ever could.

I really love the Director’s Cut of DAREDEVIL. While just short of that ultimate tier of Marvel films, this is an exceptionally good movie. It’s still a little too slick and the acting isn’t what it needs to be, but this darker DAREDEVIL is an under-appreciated and important superhero movie.

ALIEN RESURRECTION: Must Be a Chick Thing

Alien Resurrection (1997; Theatrical Cut) – Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet – Starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, Brad Dourif, Leland Orser, Dan Hedaya, J. E. Freeman, Kim Flowers, and Raymond Cruz.

I’d never seen ALIEN RESURRECTION before last night and I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Let’s be clear, RESURRECTION is not in the same league as ALIEN or ALIENS, but it is a definite step up from ALIEN 3 and it’s a pretty darn good film in its own right.

RESURRECTION is one of those movies that actually verges on being great, but falls just a bit short. It’s a fantastic Saturday afternoon movie and a could-be-better Saturday night film, but it’s also a film I’m going to watch a whole bunch between now and whenever the aliens come for me.

When I reviewed ALIEN 3, I complained that, “the corporation’s rescue squad shows up to try and take Ripley in because they still want the aliens for their bio-weapons division. Yawn. How about a film where they’ve got the aliens instead of yet another movie where this sits in the background?” Well, RESURRECTION delivers on that count, and full credit to director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, writer Joss Whedon, and co-Producer Sigourney Weaver for bringing something new to the franchise.

It’s that “something new” that initially sucked me into RESURRECTION. With the first two films in the franchise, I felt like I was watching something new, while ALIEN 3 felt a bit too much like ALIEN REDUX and a bit too much like the film sacrificed character for killing. (For those who didn’t read my review of ALIEN 3 – I liked the first half, and thought the film torpedoed it’s storyline at the midway point when it killed off its two most prominent secondary characters within minutes of one another.) One of the great aspects of a character like the alien is that you can give them to any director and get a fundamentally different look and different approach, while still getting an ALIEN movie.

RESURRECTION feels new all over again because Jeunet, Whedon, and Weaver have conspired to jump the story 200 years into the future. The Weyland-Yutani corporation is a thing of the past, yet their desire to commodify the aliens remains. RESURRECTION takes place on the USM Auriga, a military vessel led by General Perez (Dan Hedaya), where experiments are being done with the recovered DNA of Ellen Ripley (Weaver). Perez’s scientific team, led by Dr. Gediman (Brad Dourif) and Dr. Wren (J.E. Freeman), are cloning Ripley in order to extract the alien Queen that was growing inside Ripley during ALIEN 3.

It’s a perfect continuity grab to bring Ripley back to life. Even better, what we get isn’t pure Ripley anymore, but a Ripley that’s been infused with alien DNA, meaning she’s got heightened senses and strength, and only a vague memory of what’s come before. I love this move because it allows the film to bring Sigourney Weaver back yet again while still keeping the integrity of her sacrifice at the end of ALIEN 3. It also allows her to reboot the character, something she was keen on doing, and set up the future of the franchise.

And if there’s anything disappointing about RESURRECTION it’s not RESURRECTION; it’s that it failed to be profitable enough to launch a new trilogy. It’s a shame because, really for the first time in the franchise’s run, the ending of an ALIEN movie had me wanting to see where this specific story would lead in addition to simply wanting to see the aliens back again.

Doctors Gediman and Wren are using the Queen to birth a new generation of aliens that they hope to tame. There’s a great scene where Gediman is on one side of their glass cell and an alien is on the other and they’re clearly studying – even mimicking – each other. (In fact, it looks like Gediman is almost making out with the alien through the glass.) When the alien gets a bit unruly and tries to burst into the control room, Gediman hits a red button that blasts gaseous dry ice at the creature to stop it. When the alien makes a second attempt, it notices Gediman’s hand hovering over the button and stops.

Gediman is pleased – the alien is learning and won’t attempt to burst through the glass again.

Gediman is dumb – the alien is learning and will try to find another way out of its cage.

While the doctors are playing with their aliens, Ripley is kept locked in a cell where she likes to lay on the floor, trying to make sense of everything that’s happened, like why she has only pieces of memory, why she can feel the aliens moving in the ship, and why she has an ’8′ tattooed on her arm. They let her eat in the cafeteria (because every ALIEN movie needs a scene where she eats in a cafeteria), but they keep her shackled because she’s dangerous. She tells Gedimen and Wren that they’re foolish because the aliens will always win. She mentions the corporation, but Gedimen has no idea who she’s referring to. Wren fills him in on the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and in the deleted scenes, even makes a crack that they were bought out by Walmart. (Perhaps this is in the extended cut; I’m reviewing the theatrical cut because Jeunet says the theatrical cut was already his director’s cut.)

Weaver is really good here; for the first time in this entire run, she looks like she’s having a blast. Granted, none of the previous movies have been a whole lot of laughs and giggles, but Weaver was typically asked to play the serious heavy. Here, she gets to ham it up a bit and it really adds a nice change of pace to the film. There’s a terrific scene (which should be a horrible scene) where Ripley meets the crew of the Betty and she goes toe-to-toe with Ron Perlman to see who can ring the most cheese out of their dialogue.

Who’s the Betty? They’re a group of mercenaries that have transported some stolen bodies in stasis to the Auriga. They don’t know why they’re doing it (so the docs can sick facehuggers on them and use them as hosts to birth more aliens), but it’s still body theft, so it’s not like they’re a bunch of nice guys and gals.

The crew of the Betty is my biggest complaint with RESURRECTION, in that they’re not much more than their type: there’s the captain, the loud mouth, the guy in the wheelchair, the new girl, the captain’s lover, and the bad-ass killer. (Whedon has said that while his script makes it to the screen, the actors went and said his words all wrong, so perhaps this is where things went wrong.) In fact, the film even carries over one of my problems with ALIEN 3, in that it quickly kills the two main secondary characters: General Perez, and Betty captain Elgyn (Michael Wincott), leaving us with the rest of the crew. (Heck, we can toss in Dr. Gediman, too.) It’s a curious move, but at least RESURRECTION makes up for their loss by having Ron Perlman and Winona Ryder in reserve.

Johner (Perlman) is all loud and disgusting, while Call (Winona Ryder) is cutesy and shy. Call is downplayed during the opening scenes because she’s the newest member of the crew, but once they get aboard the Auriga she starts acting all mysterious. After pretending to be drunk, she makes her way to Ripley’s cell, where she intends to kill her and prevent an alien outbreak. It’s too late, of course, and besides, she’s no matched for our genetically amped-up clone.

The aliens get out of their cell by killing one of their own kind and letting its acidic blood burn through the floor. Awesome. And it proves that even in a film where you know what’s going to happen, there can still be some inventiveness and fun had along the way.

Once free, the killing cycle starts, which is where ALIEN 3 hit the skids. Even though Elgyn and Perez are killed, RESURRECTION does have some personalities to enter the void, and it gives us a solid narrative to push us through the latter half of the film. With the aliens out and the Auriga abandoned by the military force, RESURRECTION goes all Poseidon Adventure as the rag-tag group of survivors (Ripley, Call, Wren, Johner, wheelchair guy, bad-ass killer, captain’s girlfriend) must get back to the Betty to get the heck off this ship.

A bunch of short action sequences crop up along the way. There’s a really nice scene where Ripley confronts Clones 1 through 7 and a fantastic underwater chase scene which highlights the aliens in a way we haven’t seen before, and the action is generally visually, narratively, and emotionally solid. Unlike the murky ALIEN 3, there’s a really fantastic visual look to RESURRECTION; the Auriga may be mostly black, but it’s also a vibrant black that Jeunet breaks up with some great splashes of color (such as the blue underwater scene).

Ripley and Call start to bond a bit, especially after Call is outed as a robot. It’s a nice twist, but unlike Perlman, Ryder just can’t hang with Weaver. Whenever they’re on the screen together it’s like watching Toto battle the tornado – the pup might be cute but it’s going to get sent for a ride by that force of nature.

They’re making good time back to the ship when Ripley gets sucked down into a swirling mass of aliens.

And then I’m pretty sure she f*cks one of them. Or several. It’s hard to differentiate them.

It’s not like they have a Red Shoe Diaries moment (I am so out of touch with my pay cable, softcore porn references), but it looks pretty obvious that an alien sexes Ripley on her way down to the Queen. When she gets to the bottom, Ripley finds out that Gedimen has been kept alive by the Queen in order to explain to us that the DNA mixing that gave Ripley her enhanced abilities also gave some to the Queen – meaning, she can birth babies without laying an egg. The first of her new hybrid human/aliens kills her because it recognizes Ripley as its mother. (I say ‘it’ because originally it was supposed to contain both male and female genitalia.) It’s kinda a wretched looking figure, and while I appreciate what purpose it serves narratively, it’s not a great visual to have to look at.

Ripley gets to the Betty but so does the human/alien and Ripley ends up killing it by using some of her own acidic blood to puncture a hole in the window, which the human/alien is slowly sucked through into space. It’s a rather effective scene as the hybrid and Ripley are both emotionally torn over it; the hybrid feels like it’s being betrayed by its mother, while Ripley clearly feels some kind of bond back. They’re both hybrids, after all, confused about their place in the world, and Ripley now has an empathetic bond with the aliens thanks to all the DNA mingling.

Ripley gets to play mom with Call instead, as (in the extended cut) the Betty lands on a desolate Earth, overlooking a decrepit Paris. The Auriga crashes into the planet, killing (one hopes) all of the remaining aliens on board the ship. It’s a nice ending, and one that clearly sets up the possibility of another movie.

Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten it, yet, and at this point it seems increasingly unlikely. Instead of pushing that story forward, 20th Century Fox birthed the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR series and this June we’re getting the prequel that’s not a prequel that is a prequel that is Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.

RESURRECTION is kind of the forgotten film in the ALIEN franchise. The first two films are cinematic masterpieces, the third ends the trilogy, and the AVP material has the fanboy’s wet dream of two franchises colliding. RESURRECTION sits out there at the furthest point in the ALIEN universe, waiting to have its story picked up. I, for one, would love to see where it could take us.

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ALIEN / PREDATOR Review Index

ALIEN: A Survivor, Unclouded by Conscience, Remorse, or Delusions of Morality
ALIENS: My Mommy Said There Were No Monsters. No Real Ones. But There Are.
ALIEN 3: A Bunch of Lifers Who Found God at the Ass-End of Space
ALIEN RESURRECTION: Must Be a Chick Thing
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: I Think This is a Manhood Ritual
ALIEN VS. PRDATOR: REQUIEM: Small Town America Kills Two Franchises at Once