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.

FRIDAY FOSTER: She’s Just All Woman, Lieutenant

Friday Foster (1975) – Directed by Arthur Marks – Starring Pam Grier, Carl Weathers, Eartha Kitt, Paul Benjamin, Yaphet Kotto, Thalmus Rasulala, Jim Backus, Godfrey Cambrigdge, Ed Cambridge, Scatman Crothers, Shawn Stratton, Jason Bernard, and Ted Lange.

“She’s got more balls than brains.”

“She’s just all woman, lieutenant.”

This exchange comes after Friday Foster (Pam Grier) steals a hearse at her friend’s burial service in order to chase after Yarbro (Carl Weathers), the man who had just tried to kill her. Lieutenant Jake Wayne (Ed Cambridge) is furious with Friday for stealing the hearse, but private eye Colt Hawkins (Yaphet Kotto) thinks it’s good for a laugh because he knows this is just the kind of thing that Friday does.

Growing up in central Massachusetts didn’t exactly expose me to a plethora of blaxploitation films. In fact, it exposed me to exactly zero. The closest I ever came was Live and Let Die. I’ve seen bits and pieces of films over the years but I’ve got no problem admitting I’m still pretty ignorant of the genre, so I have no idea if FRIDAY FOSTER is representative of the top of the genre, the bottom, or somewhere in between.

What I do know is that this is a pretty darn good movie, full of great actors, solid action and story, fantastic music, and the incomparable Pam Grier in the lead.

Friday Foster (Pam Grier) is assigned to take pictures of the airport arrival of Blake Tarr (Thalmus Rasulala), the wealthiest black man in the country, with the explicit orders to “not get involved.” This idea of Friday “not getting involved” is a constant theme throughout the film, as man after man tells her to play it safe and Friday ignores them and goes after the story anyway. Two stories collapse together here; the first is the assassination attempt against Tarr at the airport and the second is the murder of Friday’s friend Cloris (Rosalind Miles).

At the heart of both of these incident is the assassin Yarbro (Carl Weathers), who tries to kill Friday while she’s showering, then shows up at Cloris’ funeral, and later kills Madame Rena (Eartha Kitt), a fashion designer. During the first half of the film, it’s the Weathers vs. Grier angle that dominates the film, but FOSTER has much more in store for us. After Yarbro shoots Rena, Colt goes after him and we get to see Weathers and Kotto go toe-to-toe. Surprisingly, the film offs its main bad guy right here as Colt kills Yarbro.

Friday is determined to keep chasing the story, and our small assassination attempt gone wrong film turns into a political thriller that sees Friday pitted between Senator David Lee Hart (Paul Benjamin) and millionaire Blake Tarr. Each of them thinks the other is behind a program called “Black Widow.” Friday’s investigation first leads her to the Senator; she sneaks her way into a high society party and sweet talks the Senator into finding out that the Hart thinks Tarr was behind his own assassination attempt.

Friday thinks that’s a strange thing for Tarr to do, but that doesn’t stop her from sleeping with the Senator.

I love how Friday owns her sexuality like she owns everything else she does in the story. She’s definitely a person who embraces life, whether that’s getting involved in a story, tracking down her friend’s killer, or hooking up with the Senator and then again with Blake Tarr a short while later. Grier plays it all with a sense of passion and fun; even while hot on the case of Cloris’ death, she knows how to use her charms to help her get what she wants, and when the opportunity comes to hop into bed with Hart or Tarr, or trade quips with Colt, she doesn’t let them pass her by.

Importantly, Friday isn’t some kind of super cool badass. She’s a photographer’s assistant working for a magazine and living with her brother. There’s no parents in sight and no parents mentioned; this is her reality and she makes the most of it, but she makes mistakes (she believes what Hart and Tarr sell her about the other) and she gets scared despite her bravery. But while she might turn to Colt for comfort and while she might believe the stories she hears from these powerful men a bit too readily, Friday is always her own woman, always willing to push forward, and always willing to see things through to the end.

There’s plenty of liberated 1970s feminism on display in FOSTER (and we know this because one character tells Colt to get “this liberated woman out of here”) but the film doesn’t force this agenda down the audience’s throat because Friday rarely comes off as “I’m doing this to make a point,” but rather she’s embraced who she is and doesn’t feel the need to hide it. You get the sense that “this liberated woman” is leading the movement by doing, rather than following through mimicry.

There’s a ton of great actors sprinkled throughout FOSTER. Ted Lange shows up as a sweet-talking, gift-giving pimp trying to recruit Friday to his stable of women. Friday smiles and jokes with Fancy but lets him know “you don’t have anything I want” and that “welfare’s not for me.” Fancy assures her that “all the white boys will breaking down your door” but Friday’s not swayed. I like, too, how Fancy keeps giving Friday’s brother Cleve gifts for her, but the kid always keeps them for himself and tells Fancy that he needs to start bringing higher end gifts if he wants a shot. The kid keeps the gifts to sell them on the sly. “You’re a hustla now?” Colt asks him. “New black capitalism,” Cleve replies.

Scatman Crothers shows up as a dirty horndog priest, Godfrey Cambridge as Cloris’ contact man in D.C., Eartha Kitt as a fashion designer, Jim Backus as the white money man behind Black Widow, and Jason Bernard (who isn’t something with big signature roles, but believe me, when you see him show up on screen, you’ll know him) plays Charles Foley, Hart’s assistant who’s really running Black Widow.

Just look at all that talent; FOSTER is always giving you something new to propel the film forward, whether it’s a cameo from someone you know or an action sequence. I’m impressed by how this story starts small and finishes big and I’m impressed with how what starts as a murder mystery evolves into a political film, as Tarr and Hart believe the other is responsible for Black Widow, yet come together in the end when they realize they were both wrong. But mostly, I just love watching Pam Grier and Yaphet Kotto work their way towards a resolution. Kotto is terrific as the super cool P.I., and his relationship with Grier works really well to give this narrative a backbone it risks losing when the storyline shifts after Madame Rena’s death.

FRIDAY FOSTER is 90 minutes of awesomeness.