Leonard Maltin's Rating :
Should be :
IMDB Rating : 7.1 Rotten Tomatoes Rating : 81%
Rotten Tomatoes Consensus : Featuring an atmospherically grimy futuristic metropolis, Escape from New York is a strange, entertaining jumble of thrilling action and oddball weirdness.
Leonard says in his review : "For a 'fun' film this is pretty bleak."
The movie is pretty bleak because it is a film about a dystopian world taking place during World War III that has all the bad guys locked in up in Manhattan. The narrator says : "In 1988, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem River, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don't come out."
Into this world walks Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a classic anti-hero, who has become a cult favorite. Snake is a man of few words. His best line is : "Call me Snake."
This is a really good science fiction movie. Dark and fun is a hard combination to pull off, but this movie does it very well.
Into this world walks Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a classic anti-hero, who has become a cult favorite. Snake is a man of few words. His best line is : "Call me Snake."
This is a really good science fiction movie. Dark and fun is a hard combination to pull off, but this movie does it very well.
