director
John Carpenter
screenwriters
John Carpenter
Debra Hill
Kurt Russell
based on
characters created by
John Carpenter
Nick Castle
producers
Debra Hill
Kurt Russell
cinematographer
Gary B. Kibbe
music
John Carpenter
Shirley Walker
editor
Edward A. Warschilka
cast
Kurt Russell (Snake Plissken)
A.J. Langer (Utopia)
Steve Buscemi (Map to the Stars Eddie)
George Corraface (Cuervo Jones)
Stacy Keach (Malloy)
Michelle Forbes (Brazen)
Pam Grier (Hershe Las Palmas)
Jeff Imada (Saigon Shadow)
Cliff Robertson (President)
Valeria Golino (Taslima)
Peter Fonda (Pipeline)
Peter Jason (Duty Sergeant)
Paul Bartel (Congressman)
Bruce Campbell (Surgeon General of Beverly Hills)
Breckin Meyer (Surfer)
Robert Carradine (Skinhead)
Leland Orser (Test Tube)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 101m
u.s.
release: August 9,
1996
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other john
carpenter films
reviewed on this website:
- escape
from new york
- ghosts
of mars
- halloween
- the
thing
- vampires
|
Watching
Escape from L.A. is like attending a huge reunion concert
where the aging band members prove they can still rock. They
get into character and play tried-and-true hits, and the fans
pretend it's 1977 again. When the opening chord of a familiar
song pierces the arena, everyone goes nuts. Bands like Kiss and
the Sex Pistols offer time-machine events that turn nostalgia
into self-defining incantation: I wanna rock and roll all
night. I am the anti-Christ. Call me Snake.
Movies, of course, are a different medium. Yet Escape from
L.A., John Carpenter's hard-driving sequel to his 1981 cult
thriller Escape
from New York, comes close to duplicating the ritualistic
highs of a concert. Shamelessly Xeroxing the basic story of the
1981 film, it breaks little ground. The resolute sameness of
the movie is part of its point. It's really a remake, or, more
precisely, a remix. Carpenter can still rock.
In Escape from New York, set in 1997, the criminal anti-hero
Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) was sent into Manhattan, which
had become a walled-off prison, to rescue the President. Now,
in 2013, another President (Cliff Robertson) has decreed L.A.
-- split off from the country by a 9.6 earthquake -- an island
for "undesirables." The President's daughter, rebelling
against his fundamentalist politics, is holed up in L.A. with
Latino rebel Cuervo Jones (George Corraface), who has a "black
box" that spells global doom. Snake's mission: retrieve
the box and whack the brat.
The Escape movies have a built-in trap. Snake couldn't
care less about his missions -- his "employers" must
inject him with delayed-action bombs or viruses to get him to
comply -- and we share his apathy. In an odd way, John Carpenter
dabbles in deconstruction: he invites contempt for his own plot.
The ride, though, is fast and almost festive -- more fun, actually,
than the entertaining but dour original. Escape from L.A.
finds Carpenter in a playful mood. He brings in such West Coast
targets as Disneyland, plastic surgery, surfing, and Hollywood
(talk about biting the hand that fed you $50 million) for satirical
spanking. That Escape from L.A. itself is a standard-issue
Hollywood copycat sequel only sharpens the satire.
Shooting and snarling his way through the chaos, Kurt Russell
wrings wit and personality out of Snake's two basic expressions.
Snake is what it takes to get things done in L.A. (He rang no
satirical bells in New York, where everyone was as surly and
grungy as he was.) Carpenter, writing with producer Debra Hill
and Russell, gives Snake a menagerie of eccentrics to hiss at:
weaselly Steve Buscemi, surfin' bird Peter Fonda, gender-bending
lioness Pam Grier.
Escape from L.A. is, in Carpenter's words, "cowboy
noir." Perched on his motorcycle, wearing a slick
black overcoat that reflects the flames in the streets, Snake
is the coolest gunslinger in the West Coast. The color scheme
is perfect noir: midnight black and fiery orange -- the
colors of Halloween. Escape from L.A. is John Carpenter's
greatest-hits concert album. Now let's hear some new songs from
the band, okay? |
