Writers: John Carpenter, Nick Castle
DOP: Dean Cundey
Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton
In 1997, when the U.S. President crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.
Well, I guess it is a film of its time which essentially means that it has not aged well. There are films like 'The Warriors' from 1979 which has enough going for it so that it is still a great watch despite being quite campy. Escape from New York is not one such. I only checked it out because I quite liked 'The Thing', the only other John Carpenter film that I have watched and have no interest in watching other famous films of his like 'Halloween'. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is a former US forces personnel, apparent from the line that 'You flew the gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?', which also means that US was recently at war with USSR. The President was due to attend a meeting with the Russians and the Chinese and it is of paramount importance that he is freed to do so within 24 hours. Lee Van Cleef ( The Bad from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) forces Snake to take up the mission in exchange for Pardon after injecting something which will kill him in 24 hours time if he doesn't come back with the President. John Carpenter supposedly wanted to capture the cynicism people had with politics post Watergate scandal. The Manhattan shown in the film is quite like a Terry Gilliam sort of place.
It was interesting to see a suicide mission involving a hijacked plane crashing into a building in Manhattan. It was not World Trade Center buildings but they do feature in the film. It is overall a dry watch. It did get a sequel titled Escape From L.A with Kurt Russell reprising his role as Snake Plissken.
Rating: 2/5
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