he year is 1997. Crime in the United States has become so prevalent that the entire nation has a single, maximum-security prison: the island of Manhattan. Its harbors and bridges booby-trapped with mines, its waterways and walls patrolled by a heavily armed police force, the island is cut off from the rest of the nation. All sentences are life sentences: Once a prisoner goes in, there is no coming back.
As Escape from New York begins, the United States is at war with both the Soviet Union and China. The president is on his way to an international summit, carrying an audiotape that in turn carries the key to peace. Unfortunately, he ends up in New York instead, where the prisoners make him their hostage. The police are afraid to stage an all-out assault on the island, concerned that the half-starved inmates who roam freely in the wreckage of the city will turn on their captive.
It is a situation tailor-made for an authority-bucking action hero, and fortunately for police commissioner Bob Hauk, he has the perfect man at hand. Snake Plissken, a former war hero and infamous criminal, was all set to join the prison population on Manhattan Island. Now, Hauk makes him an offer: If he can get the president out safely, with the tape, Snake will get a full pardon.
As with every deal, though, there is fine print: The police have planted a miniature bomb in Snake's bloodstream. If he fails to return the president before the timer on his personal self-destruct sequence runs out, Snake will die.
The deepest nightmares of two decades ago
Escape from New York opens with the spectacle of Air Force One crashing into downtown Manhattan. The World Trade Center is in the shot as the plane goes down, and the towers figure prominently in the story. Twenty-two years after its 1981 release, these images have an unbelievably spooky power. If the film were a relentless shoot-'em-up, their presence would render the movie unwatchable to all but a hardened few. Instead Escape from New York is a mood piece punctuated by action sequences, and somehow it still works.
This movie shows the remarkable unity of vision that comes when a screenwriter gets to direct his own script. From the first chord of its somber electronic soundtrack (also written by Carpenter), it sets a broody, dangerous tone. Despite seriously cheesy moments and weak performances by most of its cast, this movie's deep consistency is reminiscent of that found in the films of current writer/directors like M. Night Shyamalan and Baz Luhrmann.
With state-of-the-art line graphics and references to a Soviet threat that was already gasping its last as the film was being made, with Kurt Russell woodenly stomping through the motions of a presidential rescue while Adrienne Barbeau bounces wide-eyed at his side, this movie screams '80s. Its president is weak, ineffectual and arguably corrupt, a far cry from the humane and heroic filmic chief executives to come in later SF films. In its crime-run-amok concept and its villain—a tough black man with the wardrobe of a pimp—it also reflects a deep American uneasiness with issues surrounding people of color, city crime and urban poverty.
The emphasis in Escape from New York is on suspense rather than action, and by today's standards it is extremely slow-paced. Fortunately, its intensity of mood, laconic charm and massive nostalgia value offset the inertial drag of its plot.
