Escape From L.A.

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Starring	Kurt Russell
Director	John Carpenter
Year	1996
What it's worth		Second run (See it as part of a double-feature or at a dollar house.)

According to the people involved, when a nasty earthquake struck Los Angeles a couple of years ago, Kurt Russell called up John Carpenter and suggested that they make a sequel to Escape From New York, this time with Los Angeles as a city devastated by The Big One. In reality, I think both of them, especially Russell, might have been longing for the days of yore, when they could make a movie like Escape, revelling in all its political incorrectness and paper-thin stories with impunity, and decided to go for the gusto, even if it's not the proper thing to do these days.

And I respect that. Escape from L.A. is very much the child of the first Escape movie, and it's done with enough style to be a welcome guilty pleasure. Snake Plissken is back, that testerone- laden, Clint Eastwood-looking, shoot-em-up outlaw, and he hasn't changed a bit. Neither has the movie's formula. Snake has fallen from the brief grace he enjoyed after New York's end, not surprisingly. But now, he's needed because the president's daughter has snatched a weapon of mass destruction and gone into hiding in the midst of Los Angeles, a city that was nearly destroyed by an earthquake and is now used as an island of exile for all people deemed criminal or morally inappropriate. (Which is the one nod given to political correctness; a tolerance message. Ho-hum. Definitely wasn't needed in this movie.)

So Snake is railroaded into another job; this time, he must retrieve the weapon (never mind the daughter) and get back before his time runs out. And with that brief setup out of the way, we're left to watch Snake run amok through the devastated streets of the valley, the ruins of Beverly Hills, and the remnants of the Rose Bowl, in his "mow 'em all down and let God sort 'em out" style. No bad guy with a soft heart here; Snake doesn't have a sentimental spot to his name. He doesn't play fair, and he doesn't follow the rules, not even the movie rules. Which is what makes him fun. When was the last time you saw the good guy get shafted into a job, promise to kill the big baddies, and then actually attempt it, a move which would have ended the movie after only ten minutes if he had succeeded? Thankfully, the devious villains are too clever to be killed quite yet, and the movie goes on for another hour or so.

The plot is threadbare, the acting ain't great, and the effects are only so-so. But it's fun campiness, and if you liked the first movie, you'll enjoy the second, too. It's a good film to go see with some friends on a rowdy evening, munch popcorn and junior mints, and wave bye-bye to the bad guys. If you have a drive-in theater in your area, this is an ideal movie to catch there.

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