I am going to watch this movie and type notes as I watch it. It is not part of a particular series, like some of the movie series I’ve done here; I just got the 4K Blu-ray on sale and I haven’t seen it in decades. I did see it in the theater when it came out! I was ten! My friend’s older sister bought our tickets. I remember being VERY, VERY, VERRRRRRY excited to see this movie, and liking it maybe slightly less than I’d hoped but still liking it. Thinking about it now, I’m worried that it might seem like a cool future-dystopia concept that doesn’t take full advantage of its own creativity. But also there may be an element of campiness that was lost on me as a kid.
Opening credits is just text on black screen with John Carpenter’s synthy original score. He probably really likes his score and wants people to hear it. Hey, Nick Castle is the co-writer… wasn’t he basically the stuntman who played Michael Myers in Halloween?
Then a narrator explains the concept with some simple but effective visuals. In 1988 crime was out of control so they turned Manhattan Island into a prison where all they do is contain you there for the rest of your life, there are no guards or staff there, just prisoners. What do they eat, does the movie address this? Anyway, it says something about what the prevailing opinion of New York was when this movie came out, that Manhattan would descend into a worthless cesspool and Liberty Island would best be put to use as a big police station. Fox News viewers probably think this is a documentary.
Kurt Russell is being brought in, clearly he has been sentenced to life in The Mahnattan Forever-Prison. But then they show Tom Atkins and Lee Van Cleef dealing with a crisis, apparently Air Force One has been highjacked and a nutty cultist is going to crash it. As I type this, there is a lot of real-world news about a presidential aircraft. Surprisingly stupid news. I hope that this is being read at a time when we can look back and laugh at that.
The plane does crash, and while there is no actual plane crash footage, there is a POV shot of the plane flying toward a Manhattan building (!) and then a vector-graphic computer model showing us that the President’s escape pod jettisoned right before impact. Cool way to convey this; respectable effects for 1981 and this really does look like a good 4K transfer.
LVC has landed a contingent of soldier-cops on the island, which we know is not normal for them, and they find the escape pod empty. An intimidating character with a cinematically intense face communicates clearly that he has the President, shows a severed finger with a distinctive ring, and makes the squad hustle away.
Then we’re back to Kurt Russell, who is suddenly in a meeting with LVC. We get the backstory, again quick but effective; he was military but then he conducted a heist on a Federal Reserve building. His name is Snake Plissken. He is a seething macho badass with an eyepatch and a swagger that comes from deep deep down inside. We have never seen anyone more likely to be the guy your wife cheated on you with. They simply cannot help it. LVC offers to give him a full pardon if he can sneak in and retrieve The President within 24 hours. There is an important recording in a briefcase he has with him.
They inject something into Snake’s neck and he acts all cool, like “I’m tough I can handle your little baby booster shots” but then he gets mad when they tell him there are now timed explosives in his neck that go off in 24 hours. Then they put him in a glider. Gliders are always, like, wha? to me. Like, how do they…? You just get in them and they aren’t powered but they stay up for a while? And then…? They just land safely somewhere and anyone can do it? Anyway the computer screens in the glider have what looks like highly advanced vector graphic 3d modeling, except that to us now it is very clearly just live action film of models with green tape on the edges. Good effect. It’s how you had to do this kind of thing in 1981.
Some years later I was watching this on cable and my mom recognized the music in this scene, it’s a synth arrangement of a Debussy piece called “The Engulfed Cathedral”. Cool choice.
He has a watch that shows a timer. Huge watch. That is definitely 1981 technology, but more importantly he looks at it a lot and it’s going to keep things nice and suspenseful I reckon. He also has a large box with red light bulbs on it that tells him where the President’s pulse is. 1981 tech o ya.
He goes into a theater where there is actually a live show going on! How very civilized. Most of the audience is individual dudes that look like what I imagine you’d see in a porno theater, but Ernest Borgnine is grinning a jolly grin. He recognizes Snake and is the first person to say “I heard you were dead”. One of at least two Oscar winners in this cast yessir.
The downstairs area of that theater is a place of violence and sinister frights, and also it’s a dead end because the heart monitor Snake was tracking is on some drunk bum and not a President at all.
0:41:20 — He ducked into a building hiding from some kind of roving gang and meets a girl, I don’t remember this character, seems like he’s making a friend. She also had heard he was dead. She almost smooches him except the rovers show up, they emerge from the floors because this director usually makes horror movies. His walkie-talkie gets smashed as he’s escaping.
EB rescues him and tells him The Duke of New York has the President. EB is a cabbie and says he’s been driving the same cab for 30 years even though New York has only been a prison for 16 years and there are no other cars on the road and where is he getting gas, who cares it’s all fine.
They go meet Adrienne Barbeau, whose allure was important to me at this time in my life. I believe I learned things about who I am from the appearance of Adrienne Barbeau in this movie if you know what I mean. Quickly my gas question is answered, there is an actual oil pump inside this nice building. Harry Dean Stanton is in there and he and Snake have a past, Snake has not forgiven him for ditching him at a crime or something.
A motorcade arrives that we learn is that of The Duke of New York. The lead car has chandeliers hanging over the headlights. I like this choice. Snake’s successful plan to steal one of the other cars relies on his only-in-the-movies ability to render someone unconscious by punching them one time in the face.
A strange moment follows… Snake drives the stolen car in his chosen direction, which turns out to be Broadway. The others (HDS and AB) are like, uh oh Broadway bad. And we learn that’s because it is lined with thugs who are waiting for one of the five actual working cars in Manhattan to decide to drive past them so that they can beat it up and shoot flaming arrows at it. The thugs must be so excited that today is the day that happens.
I didn’t see how they figure out that The President is being held in a train car, but the gang does a stealth mission to get Snake in, who kills someone and magic-punches someone and rescues the President. But only very temporarily because The Duke of New York’s people shoot an arrow in Snake’s leg and the plot is foiled. The Duke of New York is played by Isaac Hayes (Oscar winner #2) and guess what he heard about Snake.
Daylight has arrived, kinda tardily it seems, and The Duke of New York is taking rash potshots at The President, and the briefcase is still cuffed to him, but it gets shot open and a cassette tape comes out. Intense Face pockets it.
1:10:15 — whoa, the countdown is now less than 2 hours, and we really don’t know how Snake is going to get The President out. He’s in the custody of The Duke of New York and he’s limping and being marched to a boxing ring to do gladiator work or something. It’s him and a wrestler-looking guy, and they are each armed with a baseball bat, it’s bat-fencing!
HDS and AB talk their way into the room where they’re holding The President and way too easily kill the few guards there with a knife and a gun they have.
Snake kills his opponent and the crowd cheers his name, and before The Duke of New York can figure out a response to that, everyone finds out The President is gone and they run out, ignoring Snake who gets away.
1:19:40 — He limps back to the World Trade Center where HDS and AB have brought The President, because they correctly deduced that’s where the glider was, and he apparently climbs all the way to the top despite the injury and it’s already nighttime again when they get up there, but the plan to glider away is borked because the glider gets destroyed.
They go back down and it’s all quite fast paced now, and it better be because there’s no way this timing checks out. The Duke of New York has them cornered but Snake gets them out of it with a gunshot to a gas tank, then EB is nearby to rescue them again, we recognize the American Bandstand theme he likes to play in his cab and we are relieved to hear it.
They now have the cab and The President and the map HDS made that shows where the mines are on their escape bridge. But Snake has to do the driving and it’s too hard to go fast and follow the map so they hit a mine and EB dies, and then they’re on foot and HDS steps on a mine and dies. AB really doesn’t like that and instead of going with Snake to escape, she stands there and waits for The Duke of New York who is following in his chandelier-mobile and shoots at him. But he just runs over her and she dies quite violently.
They make it to the wall with a minute and a half left on the clock but The Duke of New York is shooting at them and they tussle to get to the pully being sent down for Snake, and The President himself has already been pulled up and he has a machine gun and he vengefully guns down The Duke of New York from the top of the wall, while hysterically chanting. They get to Snake and diffuse the explosives with five seconds to spare.
The timing was crucial because The President had to play that important cassette tape for a meeting that’s going on, something about nuclear fusion. Before that meeting Snake asks the President how he feels about the people who died to save him and The President doesn’t seem very sincere in his reply, so that seems to trigger a decision for Snake. The President goes on the air and starts the play the tape… and it’s EB’s American Bandstand recording! Snake walks away wrecking what we assume is the real tape. It is a fully satisfying denouement.
Okay! This movie is not too shabby, and you can recommend it to people who want a fun, dark, violent action movie from the 80s. What I find is that the ambition of the story is less than the ambition of the concept. Maybe that’s because I’m watching it in 2025 and if this were an idea that were being produced, they would make multiple seasons of 8 hour-long episodes each for streaming on one of the major streamers. We certainly don’t find out what they eat, this movie isn’t ambitious enough to think about that. John Carpenter’s music is something I think about, partially because I like that the director is a musician who does his own scores. But there is always such a minimalism about these scores, and in the case of Escape from New York it’s a little plodding as well. You’re not supposed to think too hard about this movie, and yet it is a thought-provoking concept. And in conclusion, if I were in a relationship I would be worried because Kurt Russell As Snake Plissken.
