John Carpenter has made some great movies. Of course, he's done just as many bad movies as good ones but that doesn't change the fact that-A-he's made my favorite slasher of all time (Halloween),-B-the best remake of all time (The Thing), and-C-one of the coolest dystopian futures of all time: Escape From New York. From there born one of the greatest tough guys in all of cinema; often imitated, yet never duplicated; the one and only: Snake Plissken.
The movie tells the tale of just another adventure of the man called Snake. Set in the year 1997, when crime has become so bad in NYC that it's bridges were blown up, and the island itself was turned into a giant prison.
...wait a second, 1997? See, over time that has become one of the annoying flaws of the movie. 97 has obviously come and gone, and yet NYC still stands as a living, breathing, city. I often wonder why did he choose this year? Why not some far flung one that can't be argued? Why have a date at all, sometimes I think it's best to just say "Sometime in the future".
But I digress; it's a annoying flaw and takes you out of the film, but that's not what this is about. And if you really want to think about it, perhaps it does make sense to set it 16 years after the movie was filmed. Think about the time, 1981, and you immediately picture a city in ruins. Crack and AID's were on the rise, murders occurred every 15 minutes, money was scarce, and people were afraid. So ask yourself, do you think it would be so hard to just imagine the worst that could happen to a major city when faced with news like that? Probably not.
Again, I'm getting sidetracked. Escape From New York is everything I said about the city, but add in the President of the United States getting trapped on the island because Air Force One went down on his way to an important conference. So the government decides to send a criminal into the ultimate den of criminals. Snake Plissken is a former war hero, mercenary, and criminal. He's been captured but they are offering him a way out: get the president back. If he doesn't do it within a certain time limit, poison they inject him with will release and he will die.
Almost sounds like a modern video game doesn't it? Makes me sad there hasn't been an adaptation yet.
This New York City is unlike anything we have ever seen before. If you remember September 11th,, try to imagine the aftermath of downtown but on a grander, city wide, scale, and you'll only have a taste of the New York shown in the film. There are no pedestrians, all manner of people hide out within the decaying buildings. I often think of it as it's own little nation, outside American and not subject to it's laws. The only guards reside on the other side of the river; food gets dropped in periodically, but the people run themselves.
On one hand, it's hard to reconcile this with the NYC I know now, or even used to know. But when you think about the time this was made and most likely written, the picture becomes much clearer. Did they go over the top? Absolutely, but that's what makes the film so much fun.
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