‘Welcome to the human race...’
Escape from L.A. was doomed from the start. When the opening line from a film’s ‘production’ section on Wikipedia reads, ‘Escape from L.A. was in development for over 10 years’, you know that you’re in trouble. The issue here is that John Carpenter is a filmmaker so tied to the ’80s that he’s probably the most quintessential filmmaker of that era. By the summer of ’96, Carpenter was coming off the back of his ill-fated Village of the Damned remake and Escape from L.A. very much represents the beginning of the end for a once ingenious creator.
Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is back! And now, for reasons, he has to escape from L.A. instead of New York. The fact that that is really the entire summation of the plot is perhaps part of the problem.
I should start by confirming that this whole thing isn’t a total bust. It was Russell’s perseverance and passion for the character that got the film over the line in the first place, so it is unsurprising that he once again throws himself into the role. The problem is that by the time they finally got around to making this belated sequel, the magic had kinda run out. Steve Buscemi is a good addition to this world, and the production design is still (mostly) excellent, but we’ve seen all this done before and done better, not just in Escape from New York but also in all the other films that followed in its wake. The film also boasts some of the most ineffective CGI this side of The Langoliers. Ahh… the ’90s.
In the end, Escape from L.A. fails to live up to its predecessor or to stand alone on its own two feet. It’s fun as a nostalgia exercise, and the combination of Carpenter and Russell could surely never produce something actually bad, but this is the kind of film that I can’t imagine anyone watching twice. The basketball scene is pretty cool though…
