Escape from NY and LA

Having been to NYC far more often in the last 4 years, and L.A. for the first time in summer 2010, I decided to revisit these films again.  Oh, and I’m a Kurt Russell fan.

Escape From New York (1981).   According to this movie, the US has deteriorated considerably from 1981 to 1997 (when the movie takes place), meaning that Manhattan has been reduced from the poshest, richest island in the country, into a nasty, brutal prison island, effectively under siege by the US Police Force, i.e. the FBI considerably expanded and fascist-ified (is that a word?  It is now).

            The US President, on a flight en route to an international summit, was forced to bail out via escape pod (minus droids) into Manhattan and is now missing.  [In reality this would have been Bill Clinton, but at the time the movie was made, he was still Governor of Arkansas.]   The US authorities, in the person of bad-ass Chief Hauk (Lee Van Cleef, best known for being Clint Eastwood’s nemesis in the spaghetti westerns) sends a renegade ex-war hero, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) into NYC.  He’s given a 24 hour toxin for which only Hauk has the antidote.

            Once in NYC, he befriends Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine), Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) and Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau), while trying to rescue the president from the de facto mayor of NYC, The Duke (Isaac Hayes, better known these days as the voice of “Chef” from “South Park”). 

            As you might imagine, despite some heavy confusion and violence, Snake indeed finds and rescues the President and returns him to “civilization”.  Of course, being Snake, he refuses to fully cooperate and pulls a stunt at the very end to defeat the purpose of his rescue mission.

            I can’t say I really enjoyed the film very much.  First were the plot holes:  how do they feed the prisoners on the island? [Answer: food is dropped by chopper.  Sounds like Goering promising to feed the Sixth Army at Stalingrad with his overrated Luftwaffe.]  Where do they find gas for Cabbie’s car or Duke’s limo?  Or electricity?  I can’t say I found the explanations satisfactory.  I suppose “Manhattan as prison island’ is too attractive a concept to allow minor details like this to interfere with an otherwise compelling story.

            But I might have been able to overlook these conceptual shortcomings if it really appeared that Snake had actually landed in NYC.  What we see in the beginning is a backdrop of a dimly lit Manhattan, but when he actually is on the island, there is nothing identifiable as Manhattan.  It’s just random city streets.  According to Wikipedia, the film was shot in west St. Louis.  More accurate to call the film “Escape From Generic Run Down Urban Area.”

Escape from L.A. (1996).  These shortcomings were partially corrected in the sequel, which takes place in… 2013!  No, we don’t have a black president, we have Cliff Robertson, doing his best to act like Pat Robertson, which he does remarkably well.  Kudos on being able to make the US President into a tangibly evil villain here.

            This time around, the president’s daughter Utopia (???) has bailed out into L.A. which has become an island thanks to a major earthquake which separated it from the California mainland.  Moreover, the US government has seen fit to turn the island into a permanent exile for all the perverts and degenerates accused (convicted?) of moral crimes.  The daughter was entranced by a Shining Path Che Guevara wanna-be, “Cuervo Jones”, to whom she delivered a black box:  a control device for a global satellite network which emits electromagnetic pulse (EMP).  EMP is essentially a nuke detonated at high altitude which causes minimal damage on the ground but destroys all computer and electrical networks, dooming the target area to pre-industrial status.  Needless to say, the President wants this black box back from Jones – especially since hostile forces intend a mass invasion of the US in conjunction with Jones’ anticipated use of the device.

            Yet again, Snake is drafted – this time it’s Malloy (Stacy Keach) and Brazen (Michelle Forbes) who act as his handlers.  He’s given a 24 hour toxin (yet again) and a bunch of nifty gadgets – all of which you can guess will be employed at various points throughout the film.  This time around his “allies” on the island are Map to the Stars Eddie (Steve Buscemi), Taslima (Valeria Golina), Hershe (Pam Grier), and surfer dude Pipeline (Peter Fonda).  We’re just missing Dennis Hopper.

            This time around L.A. is prominently featured – at least in portrayal, because clearly the real L.A. was not reduced to a prison island for the film.  Beverly Hills, Sunset Blvd., the Chinese Theater, L.A. Coliseum, and DisneyLand, among many other famous L.A. landmarks.  Even Bruce Campbell appears – heavily made up – as the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills.  Really there was nothing like this in the NY film.

            I watched this in Blu-Ray, which was perhaps a bit unforgiving of the production values; the 1080p resolution probably exposed far more of the artificiality of the sets than might have been apparent to moviegoers (such as myself – I saw the movie when it came out in 1996) who had seen the film back in 1996 on the big screen. 

            Naturally, Snake does in fact retrieve the black box, and as with the prior film, sees fit to screw everything up at the end with an arbitrary and petulant “F**K YOU” signature act; trust him to detonate a global doomsday device should one ever be at his disposal at the end of a mission.  Did you honestly expect him to cooperate?  And just as with his Disney films from the 70s, e.g. “The Strongest Man in the World” and “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”, Kurt Russell’s character resolves the issue at literally the VERY LAST SECOND.

Snake.  As undeniably over the top and often silly as both films are – “L.A.” even more so than “N.Y.”, probably deliberately so – the redeeming factor in both is the undeniable badassness (is that a word? It is now) of Snake Plissken, as brought to life by Kurt Russell.  Five o’clock shadow, eye patch, military record, criminal record, great one liners, the attitude, and last, but not least, the killer nickname (“Call me Snake”).  It’s like the movies don’t even deserve the character – like a balanced and blueprinted 350 V8 dropped into a beater Camaro or Nova.