Nails the "post-apocalyptic except the world didn't end" vibe.

_Final rating:★★★★ - Very strong appeal. A personal favourite._

**Part of my 2022 Sci-Fi Tuesdays**

Just a rewatch because of a newly acquired 4K Limited Edition set from Studio Canal. These releases are something else…

And… Still like it, and still recommend you watch it. Read the old review for details.

**Old review below...**

This is one of the best movies Carpenter has ever made. Russel, Van Cleef (with an earring no less) and Borgnine wrapped up in one of the most atmospheric action flicks you'll ever see.

The action in Escape from New York leaves a bit to be desired, and it rarely, if ever, raises the tension up to adrenaline-pumping levels. BUT...there is something with this movie that makes it stand out from the rest of the early 80s action movies. The lighting, the music, the set. It all works so darn well together, and when it is fronted by a total badass like Kurt Russel, it just works.

The story is ok, but not great. It falls a bit short of its potential and manages to actually be a bit tedious when it drags on. The funny thing is that it doesn't actually ruin the experience in any way...

You might compare this movie to the an Eastwood spaghetti western. Lee Van Cleef might have something to do with that, but Russel incorporates a lot of the qualities that Eastwood used in the now-so-famous westerns.

I don't know quite how to explain this, but this movie is a really good watch, even though it lacks both in the excitement and story. Watch it at night with the lights down to get greater detail in the dark set and the full experience.

"Escape From New York" is yet another film from John Carpenter that many call a "cult" classic. It seems like practically all of Carpenter's films are considered cult which bothers me. This is mostly because Carpenter's work is often dismissed using this label. It's probably a way for movie critics to actually retain their street cred and still like Carpenter's movies. Twerps.

I read a review published in TV Guide's Movie Guide calling "Escape From New York", "a percipient satire of a society irreparably split along lines of class and race". What!?! In the movie New York is a huge prison. Class? Race? The President's plane crashes in NY (the prison) and Snake Plissken is sent in to rescue him. I'm missing the class and race commentary here. Stupid critics. Another called it "an intriguing window into the fears and anxieties of the early Reagan years". Is this because "Escape's..." president is attempting to avert a nuclear war before he crashes? Weren't Cold War fears highest during Kennedy's term in office? Can you say Cuban Missile Crisis? Seriously what the Hell are these people talking about? If forced to work at it, I can barely pick up on a general mistrust of the office of the President here. But Pleasance's POTUS does save Snake after all. Sure he dismisses Snake in front of cameras later, but which of the POTUS's actions do you want to focus on? "Escape" is nothing more than a tale about a military vet who's forced to rescue the President for the very government he distrusts.

It's been awhile since I last saw this and it's still a good time. It's got a dark mood and there's moments of humor, but not the normal action movie one-liners that frequent these kinds of flicks. Come to think of it, Carpenter's only Action/Horror spoofs are "Big Trouble In Little China" and maybe "Escape From L.A.". Other than those, his work is always pretty heavy.

I'm pretty biased about Kurt Russell's performance because I generally like everything he does. He doesn't have to do a lot with the Snake Plissken character (whose temperament he'll nearly recreate in 1982's "The Thing"), and Snake is a jerk. However, Russell is so appealing in these kinds of roles that Snake has no trouble in establishing himself as the hero. Snake is totally humorless and the polar opposite of Jack Burton in "Big Trouble...", but he's somehow really fun to pull for anyway. Adrienne Barbeau and Harry Dean Stanton are also appealing as Maggie and the Brain.

There is a lot of good stunt work and some pretty exciting action sequences. The final chase scene isn't nearly as hectic as it should be but the scenes when Snake drives through a mob on Broadway and lands his glider atop the World Trade Center is harrowing stuff.

A Snake, a Brain, a Cabbie, a Duke and the President Of The USA.

It's 1997 and Manhattan Island is a walled off prison, during the flight of Air Force One the president's plane is taken over by a terrorist and the president ejects out in the safety pod. Sadly for him he lands right in the middle of Manhattan Island. When an armed unit lands inside the walls they are told that the president has been taken hostage and they must get out of their prison ASAP. At a loss what to do, the authorities decide to send one man in alone, ex war hero turned criminal, Snake Plissken, not only does he have to contend with surviving the incredibly hostile prison, he also has a time bomb implanted in his body that, should he not get the president out safely within 24 hours, will explode and mean no more Snake Plissken!

Made in 1981 and set in 1997, it's safe to say John Carpenter is not the best predictor of the future around. However, his vision of a future where America has thrown all its criminals on one island, where they create their own society out of harms way, has to rank as an incredibly adroit piece of work. This place is grim and deadly, the flotsam and jetsam of society thrust together in this bleak and desolate place of class separation. What Carpenter has achieved with his usual minimal budget allowance is a smouldering sci-fi classic that may be as daft as they come, but it pulses with cool and cheekily slaps you around the face with its cheeky satirical edginess. Kudos is given to the great production design from Joe Alves, who along with Carpenter has crafted this brilliantly dirty netherworld of crime.

Our anti-hero of the piece, Snake Plissken, is superbly played by Kurt Russell, the original choice interestingly was Tommy Lee Jones, but Russell fuels Plissken's mantra to make him one of the eighties coolest grumpy bastards, and his work here is first class in terms of the films' apocalyptic structure. Surroundning Russell is a wealth of quality performers each adding their personal bits to this tick-tock stew, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau and Isaac Hayes all earn their money and flesh out the story to the end.

Calling Escape From New York an action picture would be setting first time viewers up for a real let down, what action there is is minimal but highly effective, the machismo flourishes acting more as a point of reference to the picture's time bomb urgency. I like to think of the film as being more a sci-fi adventure yarn laced with darkly comic humour, with of course machismo thrown in as a side salad to accentuate the bleakness of it all. A wonderful concoction indeed. 9/10

"Too little of too much" would describe this movie well, which presented us a dystopian New York with development potential and characters whose background is shared, exposed with brief moments of characterization that made me feel like I was missing this movie's predecessor. It didn't exist, and so the end result was of an expanded universe of unknown circumstances - except for the brief introduction we got in the opening credits - where the events barely told the story during the time it was running. But where this movie failed in terms of script, it almost made up with atmosphere and music. It sounds great throughout, but the credit goes to the opening theme that is as minimal as the presentation is grounded, in that humble approach of whom ambition wasn't unheard. Sadly, it's not the case of a classic whose production values challenge the computer generated visuals of today (and ironically this movie's novelty was the wireframe view), but if you're interested in history and want to make a contextual analysis, you may find something worth treasuring.
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