Escape from New York (1981)

VERDICT:
8/10 Dead Men Walking

Not quite on par with The Thing, but it is a Russenter collaboration, so therefore it kicks much, much ass.

Escape from New York takes place in the distant future of 1997 where the crime rate has quadrupled and the best idea we could come up with to get things back on track was to move all the damn yuppies out of Manhattan, sanction it off on all sides and then throw all the criminals in there to go apeshit for the rest of their days. But then some yuppie gets pissed, hijacks Air Force One, crashes the sucker into the Big Apple, the President survives, he gets held for ransom by Isaac Hayes and so the military rangles up a notorious decorated war vet/bank robber who was on his way in there anyway to rescue the Prez in 24 hours before everything pretty much goes to hell.

I think I’ve already said everything that needs to be mentioned about how deeply I long for the glory days of when John Carpenter and Kurt Russell used to be best buds and made badass movie after badass movie after badass movie, but if this is all news to you, trust me on this one, those two were glorious together. The one noteworthy thing about this entry in their relationship that I haven’t already gone off about in reviews past is that this is where it all started, back in good ol’ ’81, and oh what a year that was.

On the other hand, there’s some pros and cons to that nifty little factoid.

The main con is that Carpenter’s not exactly at the top of his game from a directorial standpoint with this one, which is kind of strange considering that The Thing came out just one year later and that was an effing horror masterpiece. The main drawback is that this isn’t exactly the prettiest, most professional-looking movie at times, and sometimes that works in its favor since Carpenter’s not exactly taking himself dead seriously to begin with, but it’s hard not to notice how slowly the first half-hour crawls by and how rough around the edges the whole package tends to be. Point is, John’s not at the top of his game just yet with this one even if some aspects are very much on-point.

But whatever, it’s all part of the experience and pretty much everything else is the shit.

Carpenter’s story is cool as hell, his characters are all cool as hell, and while it’s not exactly The Road Warrior or Children of Men, the whole post-apocalyptic vision of New York is pretty cool, too. The dialogue is pretty choice for the most part and it does start to get pretty intense once the clock starts tickin’, but for all the flaws you can pick out about this movie, they all more or less get rendered null and void when Isaac Hayes rolls down the street a Cadillac pimped out with chandeliers for headlights.

And then you’ve got Snake Plissken, and that kinda sums it all up in a nutshell.

No, it never hurts to have a killer supporting cast backed by the likes of Ernest Borgnine, Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Donald Pleasence and Isaac Hayes as the A-#1 Duke of New York, but come on, folks, it’s Snake Plissken. In what is arguably the best role of his whole damn career, Kurt Russell brings the one-man-army, just-don’t-give-a-fuck, don’t-I-sound-like-Clint-Eastwood-with-an-eyepatch pain in the way only he can and if there’s any reason to see this movie, it’s probably him. Dude was the inspiration for Solid Snake, guys, and with the exception of John Rambo, that’s a pretty boss statement that I’ll never be making again.

Whatever, you get the point. Kurt was the man, we need him back in top form. As if making it onto the banner wasn’t enough.

Yeah, Escape from New York is kinda dated roughly thirty years down the road, it’s very ’80s and it’s still an unabashed B-movie for all intents and purposes where our heroes often find themselves getting awfully lucky in some tight situations, but hell, it’s a personal favorite and it might fall somewhere into the realm of guilty pleasure if it wasn’t so flat-out fuckin’ awesome. A truly outstanding way to spend two hours even if it wasn’t until later that things really started to gel for John and Kurt. If only Escape from L.A. was of the same caliber…

I think we need another Escape from Russenter if you ask me.