Escape from New York is something of an oddity. It appears, from its title and poster, as if it’s a blockbuster action movie. In actuality, it’s a relatively low-budget passion project and it’s about as “auteur” as it gets. It’s John Carpenter doing his thing in a DIY, “indie” style, and it has his stamp all over it. This is immediately noticeable as the film opens with a minimalistic and moody synthesised soundtrack, by Carpenter himself, over a lengthly credit crawl.
Carpenter’s soundtrack permeates the duration of the film, the backdrop of which is that New York’s Manhattan island has become a locked-down prison where convicts are sent to live out the rest of their days in a dystopian crime-state. The plot is as eighties-action fodder as it comes; the President of the United States’ plane is captured by terrorists and crashes into the island. It’s ex-special forces Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell)’s job to rescue him in exchange for a pardon for his past criminal convictions.
The lead role of Snake is played to gruff, growling and masculine excess by the eyepatch-wearing Russell, a role that would later inspire the character “Solid” Snake in the Metal Gear series of video games.
The film plays out at a crawl. It’s a dreary, dark film to look at, an endless series of post-apocalyptic city streets infested with hopeless lifers. A blockbuster action movie this is not: it’s an art movie in disguise; the action scenes, when they happen, are underwhelming and drab. The intrigue in the narrative comes from the world-building. The wreckage of New York plays host to no-budget musicals in otherwise abandoned theatres and death matches in boxing rings. It’s a contemplation of a lawless society and what might happen should people be left to a dog-eat-dog world. It’s not an overly entertaining or enlightening watch, but it’s respectable in its techno-gritty nature.
1981, John Carpenter
7.5
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