Rusty’s Movie Reviews - Escape from New York & Escape from L.A.

By Rusty (But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away)

So its been a while since I posted. Now that everything is back to normal in my life, I can get back to doing what I do best. Reviewing movies for the masses (or lack there of). Since I missed last week, I’m bringing you a double dose of John Carpenter. Today I’ll be looking at: Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.. Both movies star Kurt Russel as Snake Plissken, a rebel who is constantly in trouble with the law. Plissken is a former soilder with the US Army. He became disenfranchised with the government and turned to a life of crime. Snake has skills in every department. Chuck Norris has nothing on this guy.

The plot of Escape from New Yorkis straight forward. The President’s (played by Donald Pleasence) plane, while on its way to a summit of world powers, has been hijacked and crashed into New York city. Unfortunatly NYC is now a maximum security prison and the President just happens to be carrying vital information for this summit. There is no way out of this prison, as the bridges are mined. Snake Plissken, who is about to be thrown into jail, is given a deal by the Police Commissioner: If he gets the President out alive, Plissken is a free man. There is one condition: Snake only has 24 hours to do it. If he can’t do it in 24 hours, little explosives will go off in his arteries. So Snake goes into New York to get the president. Unfortunately for him, the President has been taken by The Duke (Issac Hayes). The Duke is the head of the largest gang in the city. He plans of leaving New York and using the President as a bargaining chip. Along the way Snake recruits the helps of Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) and Brain (Harry Dean Stanton).

Escape from New Yorkis a dark film. The US is depicted as a police state, in which civil liberties have been overridden by the police. It is also a very well paced film. There are quite a few memorable sequence in this film. The one that I usually think of first is Plissken’s fight to the death with a wrestler. In the fight, the use trash can lids, baseball bats with nails sticking out, and fists too. The plot has a couple twists in it. No character is safe in this film. Even the most lovable and hokey guy could get killed, you just don’t know what will happen. Kurt Russel puts on one of his best performances as Snake Plissken. He is a bit of a smart mouth, and delivers some great lines. (NERD FACT: The studio wanted Tommy Lee Jones to play the part of Snake). The supporting cast is well rounded, and Issac Hayes plays a great villain. The score in this film is also done by Carpenter. The music is dark and brooding, which fits the movie well. I highly suggest you buy this movie.

In 1996 John Carpenter followed Escape from New York with Escape from L.A.. Escape from L.A.has the same basic idea. There is a new president, who happens to be an Christian militant. Once elected, he makes himself president for life. He decides to make a new “moral America”. Those who don’t fit into this new America are sent to L.A., which had been separated from California (I always thing Jimmy Woods when I say that) by a massive earthquake. One of the people on this island Cuervo Jones (a Che Guevara inspired character) has wooed the President’s daughter through something similar to the Internet, to come to L.A. and give him the controls to a super power satellite, which emits electromagnetic pulses. And we all know what those do. With the satellite on his side Jones plans to get his allies from Latin America to invade the states.

While all this is going on, Snake is being exiled to L.A., he is given a deal by the president: Get back the remote control, and he will be pardoned for all his crimes. In order to comply, he is injected with a virus that could kill him. Bruce Campbell makes an appearance in this movie, as does Steve Buscemi. Escape from L.A. is alot more campy than the first Escape movie. It has a bigger budget and it shows. There are more action sequences, and explosions etc. It doesn’t really add anything to the movie, and than showing off its big budget. The film also has alot of the same plot elements of the first movie. Snake being arrested, given a deal, getting injected with something, forced into a blood-sport are just few that we see. I’m not saying that this is a bad movie, there is just to much of the same thing. I’d defiantly suggest renting this.

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