Escape From New York (1981)

Ok, I think I finally get the Kurt Russell Thing. I've felt ambivalent about him in basically every other movie I've seen him in, but Escape From New York explained it to me. He's really badass. In the "future" (like, the 90's), the crime rate soars to 400% (where, how, why- don't ask these questions), and the island of Manhattan becomes a walled-off prison. Russell plays Snake Plissken, a gruff and eye-patched convict and former soldier who's dispatched into the city to rescue the President of the United States (Donald Pleasence), who crash-landed there en route to an important world conference.

Snake has 24 hours to extract the president (and the important documents handcuffed to his wrist), or else he'll die from an injection given to him by the prison head Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) as an incentive for completing the mission. He flies in with a walkie talkie, a tracking device, and a large gun, and does his best to maneuver through the hectic, dangerous remains of Manhattan. He runs into former comrade Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), who, along with his impressively-cleavaged girlfriend Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau), haltingly assists him in reclaiming the president from resident bad guy The Duke (Isaac Hayes). There's a lot of shootin' and fightin' and runnin' around. And Ernest Borgnine!

While the set up of the premise is incredibly flimsy, the sheer badassery of this movie made me just accept whatever was going on. Kurt Russell is perfect as the deep-throated, tight-shirted Snake, whose haunted past is never fully elaborated, making him all the more interesting and mysterious. He also performs one of my favorite tricks: shooting a rectangle into a wall and then kicking it in to make a doorway! Lee Van Cleef impressed me as the hard-boiled security head (or something, I'm not sure what his actual job was. Maybe he was in the military?), having only seen him in the awful Master Ninja tv show/movies through MST3K. I like Harry Dean Stanton a lot, but he didn't quite fit the role. He's not bad, he's just... underwhelming. Really, this movie is all about Kurt Russell, and a little bit about Isaac Hayes' rad voice.

The plot is pretty simple, with little development of this rundown prison world and its freaky inhabitants. As a fan of new futuristic dystopias, I would have liked a little more exploration of the big picture, or of the characters themselves, but the large amount of violence and gunfire set against heavy 80's synth music acts as an acceptable substitute. The story takes a little while to get going, but when it does, it's really awesome. The action is fun and entertaining, coupled with cool set and character designs- everything's laden with graffiti, rubble, and general grittiness. All in all, a rollicking good time!

4/5