Snake Plissken is sent into the ruined city of Los Angeles
​to retrieve a doomsday device from a dangerous terrorist.

ACTION/SCI-FI

Escape from L.A. (1996)

Directed by John Carpenter

Written by John Carpenter, Debra Hill, Kurt Russell

Starring Kurt Russell, Cliff Robertson, Steve Buscemi,
Georges Corraface, Peter Fonda, Pam Grier, Stacy Keach,
A.J. Langer, Valeria Golino, Bruce Campbell

Sequel to 1981's Escape from New York

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Connor Eyzaguirre

December 1, 2019

6/10

Snake Plissken is 100% pure uncut badass, but even he couldn't stop this ambitious sequel from collapsing into itself thanks to a misguided combination of poor CGI and avoidable cheese. It's the only sequel that John Carpenter ever directed, and it did so poorly that it killed his plans for what would've been an incredible third movie. This sequel has its moments, and Kurt Russell is always exciting to watch, but it doesn't hold a candle to the first film and is incredibly dated.

When the president's daughter falls in love with a terrorist and steals a doomsday weapon, the government calls in the only man who can save the world, Snake Plissken. They infect him with a countdown virus (again), they drop him in a major city that's been blocked off from society (again), and Snake goes up against a terrorist who plans to use his leverage to escape (again). Hell, Snake even gets shot in the leg again. It's ridiculous how much of a carbon copy this film is. The villain, Cuervo Jones (Corraface), is no Duke of New York, though. I thought it was smart modeling the president (Robertson) after a televangelist. He turned the U.S.A. into a sober country, making booze, pornography, and even premarital sex illegal. Makes you wonder just how free the country is as opposed to the wartorn cities of New York and Los Angeles.

Escape from L.A. has become infamous for its painfully corny surfing scene, in which Snake surfs a tsunami wave with Peter Fonda. It looks bad and it makes no sense. God only knows why it stayed in the final cut. The third film would've seen Snake trying to escape planet Earth itself, which would've been so cool. But this film was so bad that it halted those plans for good. I like moments from it, but overall, it's a miss.