Escape from L.A. (1996)

Director: John Carpenter
Stars: Kurt Russell, Steve Buscemi


Review:

John Carpenter is one of my favourate director. He works with low budget and made the film work with atomsphere. Some of his works are really good, like the Original Halloween (1978) and the Thing (1982) which is my most favourate Horror movie of all time. Some of them are bad, but doesnt mean they are not enjoyable. They are cheap and stupid but fun to watch in a strange way I myself could not fully explain.

Escape from L.A. is one of the bad ones. The plot is pretty much the same as Escape from New York: some shit happened, L.A. is seperated from the continent by a flood and used as a place for exiling criminals and everyone who "unfit to live in a new America". The criminals seduced the president's daughter and ordered her to stole some weapons apparently, and Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) went in to L.A. to retrieve the weapon and kill the girl.

There are so many stupid scenes in this film, but all in a playful fun way. You can feel that John Carpenter is having fun with it, and aware just how stupid it is. In a scene, Snake was surrounded by a bunch of villains with guns, and he propose that he played a game of "Bangkok Rules", that they all draws when a can he threw up hits the ground, and the quickest survives. This happened also in Hitman (2007). But in Hitman, the hero and the villains played along the rules, but in this, Snake guned them all down before the can hits the ground. This is like asking just how many more dumb could movie villains get?

Dumbass.

I was told that Snake is a bad-ass, but just how many times could he fails? He was captured and tricked so many times, despite the fact it always come back. But he even fell for the "look over there" gag in this movie. 

Dumbass.

Also stupid scenes include Snake playing basketball and surfing to chase a car. But it doesnt make you angry since you feel that the director is fully aware and having fun with it, and you laughs along. The special effects are bad, that I agree. I rather it use animatronics and minitures, but they goes for many modern movies nowadays.

Put yourself in a right mood for a movie that just for fun, and this is not such a bad movie, but this is coming from a mouth of a guy that even enjoy Vampires (1998) and Ghosts of Mars (2001). If you enjoy cheap movies like me, give it a watch.