There are some movies that not only manage to entertain but, even sometimes without meaning to, manage to sum up the time period they were made in. Casablanca, for instance, manages to capture the pre-war sense of patriotism found in America at that time while The Third Man brings to life the sense of weariness that ran through Europe at the end of the 1940's/beginning of the 1950's. When it comes to the 1980's one of the films that filters everything found in that decade into a single story is Escape from New York.

Set in the old future of 1997 the world has gone to pot and the entire island of Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison where criminals are unceremoniously tossed in. [Remember, this was back in the pre-September 11th days when it was okay to hate New York simply because it was New York.] Into this mess a group of terrorists who spout some vague dialogue about striking a blow for the workers or the people or some such thing crash Air Force One and the President [Donald Pleasence] into Manhattan. In order to rescue the President and rescue a tape cassette that will somehow put an end to World War 3 the prison officials send in the only man tough enough to handle the job, Snake Plissken [Kurt Russell].

When it comes to anti-heroes you can't get much more anti-heroic than Snake. A former Special Forces soldier turned disillusioned bank robber, Snake is the perfect anti-authority figure for the early 1980's. Not only is Snake a rebel hero for the beginning of the Reagan administration he also dresses the part. Clad in thigh-high boots, grey camo pants, black muscle shirt and long hair flowing over an unshaven face, Snake looks like the epitome of a 1980's tough guy in a cool sort of way. To further point out that Snake is a Man's Man he whispers all his lines as if he's trying to channel Clint Eastwood, has a snake tattoo on his stomach that undulates suggestively down into his pants, and wears an eye-patch. [Note: This is the first of three movies that I know of in which Kurt Russell wears an eye-patch. No, I don't know why he likes to wear an eye-patch in his movies but, really, wouldn't you if you had the chance?]

Joining Kurt Russell is a truly amazing cast. You can't make a decade defining movie without the proper cast and Escape from New York delivers in that department. Lee Van Cleef! British actor Donald Pleasence as the President of America! Ernest Borgnine! Isaac Hayes! Adrienne Barbeau's chest! The rest of Adrienne Barbeau that comes attached to that chest! Any movie that features such a huge cast acting so silly -check out the chandeliers mounted on the hood of the car that Isaac Hayes drives around- deserves to be seen just to see what sort of skeletons they have hidden in their acting closets if nothing else.

Keeping with the idea that Escape from New York could only have been made in the 1980's one only has to look as far as the packs of goons that Snake has to fight during his quest to locate the President. Dressed in stylishly shredded clothes, gelled up feathered hair, and lots and lots of bandanas, they look like 1980's bad guys but not in a good way. That, or they are escapees from a Pat Benetar video. They're scary folks who should be shot to be put out of their misery any way you look at them. Snake also spends part of the movie driving around in a station wagon. Where else but in an action movie from the 1980's could you find the tough guy hero driving a station wagon? John Carpenter may not be a visionary but he managed to create some unintentionally memorable images.

Speaking of John Carpenter, the director of Escape from New York, I would be remiss if I didn't mention his greatest contribution to the film; it's sound-track. Nothing says 1980's like the belief that anyone could sit down at a Moog and type out a mechanical sounding song and it would be acceptable. Sparse, shrieking notes punch like a nail gun through drywall throughout the movie never letting you forget that synthesizers are here to stay... or at least it seemed that way for a few years.

In the end it's not the gladiator fights, guns that never need to be reloaded, or action cab rides that make Escape from New York work, instead the film rides on Snake's sleeve-less shoulders and he carries the movie in grand style. What sets Snake apart from other anti-heroes, and what makes him such a fixture of cinema from the 1980's, is the type of character he is and the world he is forced to confront. Snake isn't a disillusioned young man or a rebellious hot-head, instead he's a grizzled thug who feels let down by the world and no longer wants anything to do with it. Snake has more in common with Michael Caine in Get Carter than he does with the counter-culture characters of Easy Rider. Gruff guys are nothing new, but they rarely meet up with the pillars of "normal" society in such a literal way as having to rescue the President nor does the anti-hero usually come out so well as Snake does. One of the few people who comes out ahead in Escape from New York is Snake; the rest of the characters are either killed or left with the prospect of continued world-wide war. Escape from New York differs from other nihilistic stories in that the hero manages to survive his encounter with an unjust society and indifferent universe. Whether this is a response to or an outgrowth of the social and political climate of the time is something that can be debated but it's doubtful that any other era could have produced a survivor like Snake Plissken. Really, if there's any problem with the follow-up movie Escape from LA -other than that it's more or less the same damn movie camped up a bit- is that Los Angles doesn't seem like a mean enough area to drop Snake into.

Snake Plissken bridges the gap between the indestructible action stars that would come later in the 1980's [Rambo, Commando, any movie where Eddie Murphy shoots at people] and the all too mortal men that came before [most any character from a Sam Peckinpah film.] But while the later machine gun men would only face wave upon wave of generic minions Snake, in a very 1970's way of thinking about an action movie, has to battle society itself. In both NY and LA Snake is blackmailed into accepting a suicide mission to save a world that he isn't interested in and that openly hates Snake back. As if this wasn't enough to convince him that the society he was being forced to fight for wasn't worth saving, while working through his mission Snake is exposed to the worst cases of greed and self-serving cowardice that society can produce. Instead of moaning his fate or being ground up by the wheels of the world Snake not only fights back but manages to single handedly destroy society. I'm not sure how the fusion of glum 1970's moralization combined with early 1980's B-movie action produced a hero that the audience identifies with and who's actions insure the destruction of the earth but it's an amazing trick. Not only does Snake deciding to stick it to the Man in spite of the consequences assure Snake of being known as one of the greatest assholes in cinema not played by Charlton Heston but in the sequel Snake comes back fifteen years later and manages to destroy the earth a second time. For creating a character that is such a strange hybrid of ideas that he manages to blow up the world twice Escape from New York will always have a place in the history of movies. I just wish they would make a third Escape movie so Snake could destroy the earth for a third straight time; that would be so cool.

Want to get in touch with me? Just drop me a line at gleep9@hotmail.com but don't call me "Plissken." You have fifteen hours, eighteen minutes to go back to either the Third Movie or Main page. You now have fifteen hours, seventeen minutes to...