It's not easy to review Escape from New York. Keep in mind. It's 29 years since director John Carpenter released this movie. A lot has changed in three decades, not least the way action movies and technology have changed. The way I see it, I can't do it justice anyway I go at it, so I just do as usual; I try my best to rate it the way it holds today, while overlooking the technological advances since it was made.
Kurt Russell never became a star, and I can't judge history. He's limited, even for an action role, but this might be the role defining him in his career. Surely it's one of the handful of roles defining his career. On the supporting cast there's a lot more interesting names. Harry Dean Stanton and Lee van Cleef is spending quite some time making us forget about Russell for a while, and when they didn't Adrienne Barbeau sure helped. I only wish we got to see more women like Adrienne in today's movies.
With a story set in the future, Carpenter made the entire New York into a prison. Unfortunately Air Force One goes down there with the President being captured by the criminals, and 'Snake Plissken' is as part of a deal sent in trying to get him out of the city alive. The initial plot lines I buy. I've had to swallow a lot worse in other movies. The problem is this 'Plissken' character lives on reputation and word of mouth only. He never does a lot to explain why he got there in the first place, why people have heard he was dead or why he's so notorious to begin with. Add in a quite lame action part of the story, it's never a movie giving you value enough for your time. The supporting roles, the prison city of New York and the criminals living there, does however make it interesting enough.
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