Retrospective: Escape from L.A. (1996)

[Jerry Saravia]

ESCAPE FROM L.A. (1996)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Two stars

I don't see how John Carpenter could've screwed up a sequel to his own
cult classic "Escape From New York." Laconic Snake Plissken is back,
this time searching for the President's First Daughter who has stolen
a black box in the guarded and secular L.A. area. Peter Fonda plays a
surfer, Bruce Campbell is the eerie Surgeon General of Beverly Hills,
reliable Steve Buscemi is known as Maps-to-the-Stars Eddie, and even
Pam Grier plays a transsexual with a deeply manly voice! All the
elements are in place but this movie is more of a redux of "Escape
>From New York" than a legitimate sequel of some variety.

For one, Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken is so laconic and overdoes the
Clint Eastwood impression to such an extent that he becomes a vile
cartoonish variation of the original Snake. There is no room for
character development so it is more of the same with no inner
dimensions at work for the character. I had little sympathy for this
grueling joke of an antihero so I cared less if he lived or died.

The plot hinges on Snake doing the bidding of the government, in this
case, the President of the U.S. for life (a bored Cliff Robertson) and
his tough henchman (Stacy Keach). They once again inject Snake with a
timed explosive charge, so he has a limited amount of time to find the
First Daughter and retrieve the black box that contains codes to
global satellites. This is the same set-up as in the original, only in
the original it was to rescue the President of the U.S. (played at
that time by Donald Pleasance). Somehow, this turgid, endless sequel
is more colorful than bleak and contains action scenes that lead
nowhere, including Snake using a surfboard on tsunami-like waves.

There are some pluses. I like Snake's inspired stand-off with some
villainous minions that seems like a cruel joke on Westerns. I also
like the depiction of a Los Angeles that is separated from the rest of
the U.S. The choice of offering potential L.A. citizens death by
electrocution or a life of misery among society's undesirables where
you can't eat red meat is fascinating satire, almost on the level of
Milton. And the ending, to be fair, is a little more bleak than the
original. Also worth a mention is the short-shrift appearance of
Valeria Golino, which almost brought my hopes up that this movie would
rock with pizazz and sensation.

But the movie seems limp and uninspired overall, afraid to pursue the
subtext of a city that wants to cleanse its citizens when, in fact,
the city looks like it is under martial law (decrying authority and
the elimination of rational thought are very much themes of
Carpenter's ouevre). And with little insight into its characters
including Snake Plissken, we are left with a movie that jettisons
humans for automatons. I recommend escaping to a different movie.


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