Watch the 'Escape From L.A.' Surfing SceneĪll of this also reflects a deeper failing on the movie's politics. How about the scene in which Cuervo Jones forces Snake to dribble up and down the basketball court making baskets to save himself from being killed? Nope, not that one either. Does the scene in which Snake and Peter Fonda's surfing guru race their surfboards on waves against a guy in a car work? Nope. Even the character names have this quality: Naming revolutionary daughter Utopia is heavy-handed in a way Carpenter would never have stooped to when he was younger, and instead of the magisterial "Duke of New York" we get "Cuervo Jones," which is more gimmicky than clever.īut it's also a matter of bad choices on the part of Carpenter, whose early career was notable for avoiding bad choices. Everything feels slightly worn-out instead of fresh, dull instead of edged. In part, this is because it's difficult to imbue referential material with the kind of crackling, offbeat energy Carpenter's early films are famous for. The problem is that none of it is quite as good, and some of it isn't good at all. The initial sequence is shot and blocked in a way that's virtually identical to the original film, the oddball cast of people Snake encounters are pretty much just variations on characters from the other movie and even the ending is a callback. But the movie ends with a signature Carpenter cynical twist: Instead of giving the doomsday device back to the president, Snake uses it to shut down all electronic activity on the planet, plunging the world back into a dark age.įrom beginning to end, the film is full of cheeky references to the original Escape From New York. ![]() He eventually rescues Utopia (although he doesn't kill her like her dad wanted), defeats Cuervo Jones and escapes. Snake does so, finding all kinds of characters and adventures along the way - from a low-grade nemesis (Steven Buscemi) who sells interactive tours to the city to a surfing guru (Peter Fonda) to an old partner in crime (Pam Grier). The government injects him with a neurotoxin that will kill him in nine hours, but they'll give him the antidote if he sneaks onto the island and brings back the superweapon. Under Jones' sway, Utopia has stolen the superweapon and fled to the island of L.A.Īs in the first movie, Snake, who has just been arrested for "gunfighting for profit," finds himself set up as the perfect dupe to retrieve the weapon. Langer) has become entranced by the revolutionary ideology espoused by South American radical Cuervo Jones (Georges Corraface). To make matters worse, the president has developed a black-box superweapon that can destroy the electronic capabilities of any country it's aimed at, which will allow this new theocratic United States to take over the world.įor the moment, though, this plan for global hegemony has been thwarted. The country is being ruled by a pseudo-Christian president-for-life (Cliff Robertson), who has decreed the United States of America will deport anyone deemed morally undesirable to the offshore hellscape that was once the city of angels. Now it's 2013 and instead of New York City being turned into a gigantic prison, the city of Los Angeles has been turned into an island as the result of an enormous earthquake. Kurt Russell reprises his indelibly cynical character from the first film, Snake Plissken. In its plot points, the movie hews closely to the outlines of Escape From New York, so much so that it feels more like a remake than a sequel. His films lost their relevance and increasingly felt not like the work of an artist exploring the crazier parts of his world so much as someone trying to remember what it had once been like to do this.Įscape From L.A. Carpenter, like so many artists, started recycling his own material, exchanging originality for reference. ![]() ![]() ![]() But at some point after that, the magic began to fade. Starting with 1976's Assault on Precinct 13 and ending with 1988's They Live, he made at least eight movies that have come to be seen as genre-defining cult classics, including Halloween, The Thing, Escape From New York and Big Trouble in Little China. 9, 1986, was Escape From L.A., the first signal of the final deterioration of a great director.įrom the late '70s through the late '80s, Carpenter put together the kind of run most filmmakers dream of. They were hoping for a gem by a filmmaker whose career had become increasingly uneven. In the summer of 1996, fans of genre-movie director John Carpenter were thrilled to learn he was readying a sequel to his classic 1981 film Escape From New York.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |