50/50 Review #19: Escape From New York.

I've been waiting to watch this movie for a while. My excitement couldn't have grown more after my love of the last Carpenter/Russell collab I saw, Big Trouble in Little China. With such high expectations, though, could it possibly live up? This film follows the idea that Manhattan has been taken over as a high security prison run by Hauk (Lee Van Cleef). The only rule... if you go in, you don't come out. But when the President (Donald Pleasance) crash lands inside, and the government can't get to him, they have to hire an inside man to grab him. This man is the infamous Snake Plisskin (Kurt Russell), who is offered his freedom if he saves the president in 22 hours--and death if he fails. In order to save the president from The Duke (Isaac Hayes), he teams up with Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau), and Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) so he can get him as quickly as possible to meet his deadline.

While I wasn't as wholeheartedly enamored with it as Little China, I have to say... I still thoroughly enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It's just so... cool. It's really hard to explain why, though. The atmosphere of it all, for starters. It's really not a dystopian or post-apocalyptic film, but his has the feeling of both. The outside world is normal for all we know. But in the world of this prison, it's dark, gritty, and every-man-for-himself.

Any how can you not love that cast? It's insane. I think that has a big part to do with why this movie works so much. These characters and how they're portrayed is a lot of fun. Of course you gotta give it up to Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, and Isaac Hayes. But this movie, hands down, belongs to Kurt Russell playing one of the most badass characters ever. I'm a sucker for antiheroes, and he hit all the right notes. To make it even better, he's totally cheesy with how over-the-top he presents his character. The voice, the way he carries himself... everything. But it's a good cheese, because it mixes with the badassery of the character to form this... amalgamation of awesome.

To be completely honest, I have very little else to say about this movie. It's just... fun. In large part due to how cool Snake Plisskin is as a character. I think I would need to see it a couple more times to really get into the other characters and the overall setting and feel of the flick (I unfortunately had to watch it over a 2 day period, and during an annoying medical situation, which kind of took me out of it). But on the first watch, it was pretty dang awesome.


A Keanu 'Whoa'


(P.S. I was so tempted to give it the top rating, but I just couldn't, at least not on this first viewing. Nothing wrong with the film itself, just personal feelings and probably too much self-hype mixed in. But I suppose consider it a very strong version of this rating.)


(P.P.S. As far as Russell/Carpenter goes... I forgot about The Thing, too, which I've also seen. Just wanted to throw that out there before somebody else had to point it out.)