John Carpenter is a director known for taking risks with his
high octane, pulp fiction inspired movies; and Escape from New York is no exception. The film also stars Carpenter
favourite Kurt Russell. But what is the film about, you may be asking? Well,
I’m not sure I know really.
Set in the near future of 1997 (or the near past, as of the
writing of this review) or the present as a title card tells us at the opening.
Manhattan has become a giant prison and when a terrorist takes control of the
president’s plane, he is forced to make an emergency landing on the island.
However, when a group of soldiers is sent in, they are informed that he is
being held captive by a group of criminals and if they attempt a rescue mission
he will be executed. Unable to act directly, they send in a disgraced former Special
Forces officer named Snake Plissken (played by Kurt Russell). In reward for the
president’s rescue, the army offers Snake a full pardon on all his past crimes.
Yet to keep Snake on track, he is injected with microscopic explosives with a
time limit in order that the president might make a meeting between himself and
the premiers of both China and the Soviet Union. From this point on it is a
race against time to rescue the president and in doing so, saving his own life.
From this plot layout alone, you might expect a fun action
thriller with lots of tension and suspense. As Carpenter has proven with films
like Big Trouble In Little China
(1986), They Live (1988), Prince Of Darkness (1987) and Vampires (1998), he can handle these
large set piece movies with grace and intelligence. Yet here in this earlier
effort, he seems to end up somewhere falling short.
For one thing, Snake Plissken doesn’t seem to have much
personality. Everyone in the film seems to know him (or know of him) but we
never get a sense of what’s supposed to be so memorable about him. Russell
seems to portray him in a kind of gruff and brooding way, as if he’s doing a
hammy impression of Clint Eastwood’s ‘man with no name’ characters. Nevertheless
it lacks the depth of such a character. The thing about these stoic characters,
is that we are left to assume what kind of past that they may have had. And it
feels as though half of Escape from New
York is spent with people telling us how much they’ve heard of Snake
Plissken, whilst at the same time not divulging any of their supposed knowledge
to the audience.
There’s also a serious problem
with the films tone. It seems (at the beginning) to be setting up a kind of
suspenseful flick. Yet as the film moves on, it seems to plod along in too many
drab and dull set pieces. The previously mentioned potential suspense seems to
fall by the wayside, while we watch a number of scenes of non-progressive
character development.
In Carpenter’s later works, there
is always a weight behind the actions moving them forwards. In The Thing, the characters have to find
out who might be infected in order to save themselves and the remaining crew.
In Big Trouble In Little China, Jack
and Wang are interesting characters who we want to see succeed. But here in Escape from New York, there’s no real
sense of urgency. Even though Snake’s life is on the line, we never have a
sense of anxiety or worry for him whilst watching the movie. He doesn’t show
much emotion about these things, so why should we?
On a more positive note however, the
film does have a nice look to it. There’s a great sense of style to the film in
terms of art design, and the music (provided by Carpenter) really adds to the
piece in the more successful sequences. Over the years I’ve often read that
this is one of the definitive John Carpenter films, however, after viewing it
for myself, I’m inclined to think they may be looking back on this one fondly
through nostalgia goggles. It’s a creative, zany, visually pleasant film that,
as a story, is a complete mess. It is however, the kind of mess that only a
great filmmaker could ever wish to create.
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