![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/e/escapefromla.jpg)
Escape From L.A.
In this follow-up to John Carpenter's beloved 1981 B-movie Escape From New York, Kurt Russell returns as laconic, raspy-voiced Snake Plissken, and this time it's L.A. that has become a Federal penal colony. When the president's rebellious daughter gets her hands on a military briefcase and crash-lands Air Force Three on the earthquake-stricken island prison, Plissken is once again forced by the authorities to mount a one-man rescue mission — but that's about all of the original film to find here. Forgoing the sinister urban wasteland and magnificent brutality of the original, Escape From L.A. goes for cheap Hollywood in-jokes, and watching Plissken surf a Tsunami, attack baddies via a hang-glider, escape a demented plastic surgeon's office, and play basketball in a full-court Thunderdome can only make Snake fans wish he would go back to killing men with his bare hands without so much fuss and bother. Were than not enough, the action sequences are lackluster, and while most of the matte backgrounds are well done, the CGI effects are some of the worst this writer has ever seen outside of a low-budget sci-fi TV show. Snake, we hardly knew ye. Also starring Stacey Keach, Steve Buscemi, Pam Grier, Michelle Forbes, Cliff Robertson, Peter Fonda, and Bruce Campbell. Good transfer, DD 5.1, trailer.
—JJB
