Post by ronnierocketago on Nov 2, 2008 21:41:23 GMT
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) - ***1/2
"Call me Snake."
Writer/Director/Composer John Carpenter has always denied it, but I'm certain that the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979 was a major influence on his B-action classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK that was released two years later. If not, the parallels then are coincidentally fascinating. Consider that the plot involves an American government official, the U.S. President (Donald Pleasance), who crash lands into the futuristic maximum security prison of Manhattan Island, where he is in custody of the violent inmates who with their primitive weaponry, under their charismatic leader "The Duke of New York" (Isaac Hayes), hold back at bay the superior high tech prowess of Uncle Sam's great military. Compare that with Iran, where despite our billion-dollar arsenal in nukes, subs, and other cool shit that cause explosions, we were helpless as they both held our people for over a year and took down a Presidency.
Both authorities also unleashed their own desperate rescue plans, the Carter Administration with Operation Eagle Claw, and the United States Police Force chief (Lee Van Cleef) sending in wanted criminal/former war hero S.D. Bob "Snake" Plissken (Kurt Russell). Eagle Claw failed in part due to incompetence, mechanical failure and (if conspiracy theorists are to be believed) sabotage. If Snake saves the President in under 24 hours, he receives a pardon and walks free. If not, a microscopic "body bomb" injected into his arteries will then detonate, and he'll explode like a tomato. Talk about an incentive to succeed.
ESCAPE was produced in the late 1970s and 80s when a whole crop of gritty and dirty post-apocalyptical flicks sprung out, from George Miller's MAD MAX and THE ROAD WARRIOR to Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS to James Cameron's THE TERMINATOR and so forth. They all reflected the cynicism and grittyness that reflected the times: A sluggish down economy, a war in Afghanistan, low domestic morale, and bleak prospects for the future.
Thank God we don't live in those times anymore.
ESCAPE is arguably the most fantastical at visualizing such a future, with its amazing art direction done on a shoestring budget. ESCAPE captures the urban decay and ultra-seedinees that the world had defined the then ridiculously crime-plagued New York City, with help from murals painted by a younger Cameron in fact, but mostly by shooting in East St. Louis, which had whole streets and neighborhoods ravaged and gutted by a fire years earlier. This convenient tragedy gave Carpenter freedom in many shots to project depth of up to several city blocks at a time, a unique proportion that models, trick photograhpy, or even perhaps current state-of-the-art CGI, couldn't pull off as well. Consider when we go to the Duke of New York's home, it's an abandoned train station that's spacious and mostly empty. Most pictures try to have the adversaries in such scenes be exhibited as a giant menace, symbolic of their wielded power. Instead, with Hayes, his small gang, and Pleasance all dwarfed by this gigantic epic icon of progress that's rotting away as it's inards are possessed by these small and mighty meek hoodlums who've inherited it.
This is an allegory of John Carpenter's America in fictional 1997, where indeed in reality we felt the phenomenon known as the "Rust Belt," with the collapse of the steel industry and outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. Many of those barren buildings still stand, like those in ESCAPE, the remains of the "City upon a Hill," that President Reagan was always fond of describing the United States as.
Anyway, ESCAPE was the more openly fun drive-in-theatre natured of that doomsday genre, and this may sound trivial, but I think an underdiscussed factor for it's continued success is just how easy that title rolls off your tongue. Go ahead and do it. See? There is just something natural about that label, as if those four words were always meant to be together (which I can't say for ESCAPE FROM L.A.) Plus it gives off a vibe promise of sweet exploitation cinema, and it sure delivers it this side of HELL UP IN HARLEM or THE HARDER THEY COME and so forth.
But what makes ESCAPE flee really is Russell. Up to this point in his career, he had only done those corny/safe Disney pictures (think HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, but lamer) and he wanted to escape (pun!) into cinema adulthood. Carpenter had worked with Russell on the television flick ELVIS (which notably beat an airing of GONE WITH THE WIND ratings-wise), and thought Kurt had great untapped potential. The studio Avco-Embassy wanted a more established action figure like Charles Bronson, but Carpenter wouldn't budge. I mean you can't really blame Avco-Embassy for being skeptical, for the modern equivalent would probably be Ashton Kutcher. Then again, sometimes taking risks do pay off. Just ask 20th Century Fox for casting that sitcom star for the lead in DIE HARD.
Russell relishes this opportunity in playing perhaps arguably the most awesome self-centered scumbag criminal asshole you'll ever cheer for. As I've written before, people generally confuse the term likeable with compelling, in that you must like the hero to be involved, and I think that's nonsense. You may admire what Snake does to save his neck, even if you don't like it personally. There is a point when Snake walks by a gang rape, and he doesn't pause. First and only time I've seen an action hero do that at the movies. Later he makes a deal with traitorous partner-turned-ally Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) to snatch the President from the Duke's hands in exchange for Snake to take him and his mistress (Adrienne Barbeau) out of the prison on that auto-glidder parked on the roof of the World Trade Center. Yet if you looked at that glidder earlier, you'll notice that it only seats one, maybe two at best. Then you realize it:
Snake would have stabbed those two prisoners in the back, and leave their asses behind to suffer for betraying the Duke. Wow, what a bastard.[/i]
Russell is complemented by a strong solid supporting cast from Cleef to Hayes to Barbeau to Stanton to the last taxicab driver in Ernest Borgnine, but the most beneficial might be Pleasance. People have slammed Carpenter for casting a British actor as the U.S. President who didn't much bother to shake his native accent, and I would argue that is a small prize to pay for Pleasance playing excellently as the pompous King now trapped by his own peasant subjects, who mock and ridicule him in the ultimate humbling. Take this awesome scene when Hayes practically makes the most powerful leader on Earth his bitch:
The biggest criticism though I have with ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is that Carpenter's action cinema is surprisingly at times underwhelming and even dull. I mean surely that gladiator pit fight between Russell and that barbarian could have been a tad more exciting and pulse-pumping, yes? Still, I dig his small touches that defy our expectations, like when Snake early on meets a girl (Season Hubley). You assume she'll tag along with him for rest of the film, but instead the cannibalistic crazies break through and make her lunch. How about also the Duke's limousine with the pimp chandeliers on his hood? I'm still shocked that no gangsta rapper has yet plagiarized that tacky art-deco scheme for their automobile.
But my favorite Carpenter auteuristic contribution must be the ending, a summation of all his libertarian/anarchistic emotions, where this future American police state America is even worse than a thug like Snake Plissken. You have the previously uncaring Snake ask the freed President (minus a finger) his thoughts on all those people who died helping the operation, and he's rather indifferent. The original script draft of ESCAPE was penned just after Watergate, when the American public felt betrayed that a White House administration thought the country served them, not the other way around, as we all learn in High School Civics. ESCAPE also emerged from the anti-authority days of punk rock music like The Clash and Sex Pistols, so with Snake's screwing and humiliating the President as a clown live on global television, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is also technically a punk movie.
I mean, what else would explain for Carpenter having the prison guards be based on Liberty Island, where above them stands the Statue of Liberty that once long ago promised a land of freedom and opportunity?