The film itself is a fairly basic escapist story, with our anti-hero Snake Plissken sent into the mad house under duress, in order to rescue the President after Air Force One is hijacked and crashed into the city. The catch, Snake only has 22 hrs to find his man and get out before micro-explosives implanted in his carotid arteries turn him into mince meat.
Snake himself is your typical hard as nails 80's bad-ass, with special forces training, chain smoking habit and cobra belly tattoo to prove it. Even after being cross-bowed in the leg he still manages to climb up and down 50 floors of stairs without losing his breath, and even smashes in the skull of a wrestler thrice his size with only a spiked bat. Yes Snake truly is a dude not to be messed with and there's no doubt as to why he's the basis for Hideo Kojima's Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series and has been parodied in both The Simpson's and American Dad.
With such a strong character for some great 80's machismo idolisation, I was ultimately surprised by the sheer lack of ass kicking action I had expected from the film's poster and over 30 years of cult status. Whilst there was plenty of scenery smashing and the climatic final car chase was explosive, overall the few fight scenes ended far too swiftly and for a highly trained ex soldier Snake's body count is relatively low. Whether this is to add emphasis to his precision abilities or simply due to the films ambling pace I'm not sure, either way it feels like Snake should be a one man army but ultimately falls short and survives by chance.
It's pretty easy to see Carpenter has some big ideas at play here, questioning the capitalist establishment of the then (and now) government, with subtle references to its increasingly overbearing military control of daily life, the erasure of civilian identity, and the ease at which official's such as Donald Pleasence's "President" can dismiss the lives or ordinary people. However his stylistic approach sharpened by horror films such as Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980) leads the film to be constantly building suspense which never really pays off. There's no surprise twist or boss fight with Issac Hayes "The Duke", and even as Snake walks off into the night he seems fairly undeterred by what has just taken place.
Eerily enough much of the film takes place in or around the World Trade Center, with Snake even landing a small glider on the roof of one tower in order to infiltrate the city as well as the President's plane forcibly crashed into a building near by. The sense of how dominating these buildings were on the New York skyline and how there deterioration represents a change in American attitudes to a police state is certainly not lost on modern day audiences.
What really stands out and what I personally think gave Escape from New York its cult status is its production design and locations. Everywhere you look this world is coming alive before you, from the gritty streets to the run down houses, this prison is a place of no hope or order. A design that would be a huge influence on Arnold Schwarzenegger's dystopian sci-fi The Running Man just a few years later. Even the futuristic wire-frame animation of the gliders night cameras looks real. Though in the latter's case it is real as CGI effects were far too expensive at the time and so a black light model of New York was built and filmed. There's some fantastic costuming riffing off 1979's The Warrior's and with out a doubt Snake's combat rogue look is one that routinely graces the halls of Comic Con.
Whilst not entirely living up to my expectations, Escape from New York was a great romp through the beginnings of John Carpenter's illustrious career and with a music track that scream's 80's I believe its a great starting point to this crazy adventure.
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