The word I thought of when finishing this film was “streamlined.” In comparison to today’s action films, the premise is simple (“Save the president.”); the plot moves relentlessly with no distractions, flashbacks, exposition, or unnecessary complications; and the ending is a blissfully concise climax. When Snake, our taciturn hero (Kurt Russel) makes it to his finish line as the time runs out, there’s none of the usual tiresome flickering-numbers, shaking-camera, down-to-the-microsecond nonsense. Instead, he’s relieved of his suicide device, takes a breath, and then checks the timer. Two seconds to spare. TWO SECONDS! He should have picked up a sandwich or something.
Not that it spares the badassery. We get only tantalizing hints of Snake’s criminal history through an eyepatch, a cobra tattoo emerging from his waistband, and a few muttered words about “Leningrad” (remember when the cold war seemed like an inevitable part of the future?). Isaac Hayes is perfect as the “Duke of New York,” driving around in a sweet Caddy outfitted with multiple chandeliers. Harry Dean Stanton is irreplaceable as Brain, the two-timing con man. And though the film was done on a relative shoestring, the choice to film in an actual bombed-out city (East St. Louis) makes for a chillingly convincing post-apocalyptic hellscape. The set pieces, too, are nearly eerie in their resourcefulness. The first thing Snake stumbles on is a group of convicts, many in drag, others playing junk instruments, putting on a musical. He’s put in the ring for a boxing match in Grand Central Station with what looks like an old-school circus strongman. The Duke’s first mate, a fey, David-Bowie type, confronts the police with stubs of the president’s severed fingers. With no explanation of who he is and whose fingers he has, he simply drawls, “You touch me, he dies. You’re not in the air in thirty seconds, he dies. You come back in, he dies. Twenty seconds. Nineteen.” The entire film is as sleek and weird and accomplished.
At the end of the movie, Snake returns to the police commissioner, who he’d promised to kill at the beginning of the film. “You going to kill me?” the commissioner asks. “Nah. I’m too tired,” Russel says. That’s right, Snake. You take a motherfucking NAP. Well deserved.
by Katherine Follett | Source: MGM DVD
12 Jun 2009 3:58 PM | Comments (3)
I saw this movie with my dad when I was nine years old. The feeling I had at the end, when Snake chooses to destroy the tape and possibly throw the world into complete Armageddon, was something close to euphoria.
John Carpenter’s Escape from New York is azaming work of action and science fiction.
“Sna-a-a-a-a-ke Plisken!! I heard you were dead.” This moofie made Disney-boy Kurt Russell into a cult-hero.
C
12 June 2009
8:16 PM