‘It’s the survival of the human race, Plissken. Something you don’t give a shit about...’
Sometimes, a film review only needs to be a list of names. Kurt Russell. John Carpenter. Tom Atkins. Harry Dean Stanton. Lee Van Cleef. Donald Pleasence. Adrienne Barbeau. Isaac Hayes. Now, what I love about this disparate list of people is that if you went up to someone on the street and read it out to them, it would mean nothing to 90% of all other human beings. But for the 10% that did know, they’d be beaming from ear to ear. I think the time has come to accept that Carpenter has to go down as the greatest cult director of all time…
Russell plays Snake Plissken, a mercenary and lunatic who also wears an eye patch (because 1981). Van Cleef is the police commissioner, Pleasence the President and Dean Stanton, as ever, is just some fucking guy. We are set in the unimaginable distant future of… 1997. Manhattan is just a huge outdoor prison now where men with perms, bandanas and guns roam the streets at will. The President has been kidnapped and so the authorities bring in a man who literally calls himself ‘Snake’ to retrieve the most important man on earth. Fantastic ’80s movie logic in action.
While this is undoubtedly an action movie, it’s far from brainless. Carpenter, as ever, has something of real substance to say here, namely an expression of the deep cynicism that the American public felt in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, but also the emerging contrast between the slick, corporate world of the police state and the medieval, brutal reality of life on the streets. And Russell? He’s just incredible, isn’t he? Snake Plissken. What a great hang that guy would be. The eyepatch. The stubble. The hair for chrissakes. A cinematic icon.
It’s astonishing, really, that a film this good wouldn’t break Carpenter’s top five, nor is it his best (or even second best) collaboration with Russell (that would be The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China, respectively). That’s why he’s the king. And as I’ve now been an insufferable completist, I’m going to have to watch Escape from L.A. even though everyone agrees that it is a far inferior film to this one. I can’t wait.
