Escape from L.A. (1996)
Genre: Action / Scifi
Duration: 101 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: John Carpenter
Stars: Kurt Russell, Stacy Keach and Steve Buscemi
IMDb score:
5,7 (85.136)
Releasedate: 9 August 1996
Escape from L.A. plot
"Snake is back."
After a shock of 9.6 on the Richter scale in 2013, Snake Plissken ends up in Los Angeles. His mission is to find a lost Doomsday Device in destroyed LA. If he doesn't meet the deadline, a poison is injected into his body. But this mission doesn't seem to be that easy...
Actors and actresses
Snake Plissken
Malloy
Eddie
Utopia
Surgeon General of Beverly Hills
Hershe Las Palamas
Pipeline
Cuervo Jones
Skinhead
Brazen
Reviews & comments
RuudC
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- 4636 messages
- 2529 votes
Carpenter on track! Escape From New York was already entertaining, but when Snake Plissken has to escape from LA, it's taken up a notch! I've always watched with a big smile as John Carpenter expresses his distaste for Hollywood in this print. Several studios have to pay for it, but the way the urge for plastic surgery is handled is priceless! A role that fits Bruce Campbell perfectly. He's not the only one with a great cameo, though.
You'd almost forget it's an action movie. Escape From LA may look a lot like a nocturnal Mad Max, but it does have the atmosphere you would expect from this escape film. You can also clearly see that Kurt Russell was looking forward to it. He (and many others) do a fantastic job in this action lick. Everything is on top of the nineties. The computer effects are terrible, but that didn't spoil the fun for me. Sometimes it is a bit predictable, but this almost tends to the ultimate popcorn entertainment.
Translated from Dutch · View original
ILDIB
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- 3061 messages
- 2378 votes
That special effect guy must have had a blast. . T gets some points for the setting and originality.
Translated from Dutch · View original
FlorisV
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- 1854 messages
- 795 votes
Of all the roles Russell has played in Carpenter films, Snake Plissken is by far the most boring. Where McReady in The Thing still melted his computer because of a lost chess pot, also faced difficult choices and Jack Burton in Big Trouble guaranteed tasty one-liners and fun blunders, Snake has nothing to offer at all.
The cult status of Escape from NY turned out to be heavily exaggerated during a review. Still, the story made a little more impression there because of the grimness. That atmosphere is nowhere to be found at Escape from LA and is mainly replaced with idiocy.
Where the film tries to be brutal, it also fails. For example, we see a kind of basketball game with a deadly "shot clock" after which someone else is suddenly beheaded completely haphazardly.
The supporting roles of Henry Fonda and Bruce Campbell are also wasted talent.
Although there is a lot more action than in Escape from NY, the film doesn't look very special and the special effects are even subpar at times, such as the surf scene, where you can clearly see that it is studio work. Even with a low budget, below the level that Carpenter can achieve.
The political message is also quite nihilistic in the end: let everything go to the buttons. In any case, the government cannot be trusted. It's not for nothing that we hear a Western-like tune at the end. You would almost think that Carpenter is a libertarian.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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