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Escape From La | 
| Director: John Carpenter
Actors: Kurt Russell, A.j. Langer, Steve Buscemi, Georges Corraface, Stacy Keach
Studio: Paramount
List Price: $9.95
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Rating:  105 reviews
Sales Rank: 27660
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0792142926
UPC: 097363324935
EAN: 9780792142928
ASIN: 0792142926
Theatrical Release Date: August 9, 1996
Release Date: August 5, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Amazon.com essential video
Fifteen years after John Carpenter squandered a great idea on a mediocre movie (Escape from New York), he does it again--this time on the Left Coast. Kurt Russell is back as the terminally cynical one-eyed action hero Snake Plissken who, this time, has been coerced into saving the world in Los Angeles. It's 2013 and L.A. is now an island maximum security prison off the coast of California. Snake has 10 hours to find a doomsday weapon that's fallen into the hands of revolutionaries before he dies of a virus with which he's been injected. But the action is clumsy and unimaginative: lots of shootouts and very little suspense. Even the bad guys aren't particularly inventive; only Pam Grier, as a transsexual gang leader, strikes any sparks. Russell growls his way through the role but can only blame himself: He cowrote the script with Carpenter. --Marshall Fine
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| Customer Reviews: Read 100 more reviews...
 Under appreciated minor classic almost a remake February 21, 2005
Wayne Klein (My Little Blue Window, USA)
21 out of 25 found this review helpful
Sequels used to be about remaking the same film again and again (remember "Friday The 13th" or "Nightmare on Elm Street"?)with minor variations so the audience gets their fix. John Carpenter, Kurt Russell and Debra Hill inverted the paradigmn reprising the best elements from "Escape from New York" while introducing a heavy dose of satire aimed squarely at the Moral Majority and groups of that nature. While not as memorable as that film, "Escape from L. A." takes perfect aim at liberal Hollywood, the conservative religious right, sequels and skewers them all dead on most of the time.
Snake Plissken is back in trouble. Captured again he's put into the service of national security against his will. It seems a device that can detonate orbital nuclear devices has been stolen by the President's daughter and delivered into the hands of a self styled rebel leader named Cuervo Jones (George Corraface)in what's left of Southern California. Cuervo plans on using this device against the United States. Plissken is sent to the island of Los Angeles to retreive the device. Yes, folks the BIG ONE finally hit and a large part of the Los Angeles basin dropped into the ocean like a ten ton weight while the remainder floats off the coast of the United States making the perfect place to deport people who don't have high moral fiber or generally tick off the President for life (Cliff Robertson in a twisted performance). Infected by a deadly designer virus that makes Ebola seem like the flu, Snake has no choice but to take the job of retrieving. Malloy (Stacy Keach stepping in for the late Lee Van Cleef)and Brazen (the beautiful Michelle Forbes late of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", "Homicide: Life on the Streets" and the second season of "24")provide Snake with his only link to the outside world.
Along the way Snake meets surfers (Peter Fonda), the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills (Bruce Campbell in a hilarious role that truly is the highlight of the movie)in pursuit of the device. Oh and once again Snake has one of those huge digital watches attached to his wrist to remind him his days are numbered if he doesn't get the device back in time. Filled with great cameos by Steve Buscemi (as Map to the Stars Eddie), B-movie queen Pam Grier (as Hershe Las Palmas), Italian beauty Valerie Golino, the late Paul Bartel, Issac Hayes (in a cameo) and Robert Carradine "Escape from L.A." just might be Carpenter's most undervalued film (along with the great satire "They Live").
The weakest link in the film turns out to be the uneven visual effects done by Disney's Buena Vista Visual Effects. Some of the opticals look great particularly the scenes where Los Angeles gets hit by the 9.6 earthquake. The sequences involving the mini-sub and some of the helicopters look as if they were taken from computer games. While computer graphics were still developing at the time, I'm surprised that Disney's effects house wasn't able to come up with more convincing visuals for this sequence. Still, while they aren't what they could be they're not the focus of the story either and are a pretty minor problem. Many of the best effects work quite well. The production design by Lawrence G. Paull ("Blade Runner", "Back to the Future", "Predator 2")gives the film a much bigger look than the budget the film had (it cost roughly $50 million to make including the marketing portion of the budget). A bit of trivia about the film. Russell appears wearing the same costume he had for the first film at the beginning. Russell also made all the basketball shots seen in the climatic game himself.
Presented in its original widescreen format with a trailer as the only extra, this was released when Paramount was playing catch up in releasing product for the DVD market. The image quality is exceptionally good with great color reproduction and a nearly flawless print (particularly when compared to the remastered re-release of "Escape from New York")with a nice 5.1 sound mix.
It's too bad this hasn't been reissued with extras (such as a commentary from Carpenter and Russell and one or two featurettes. Heck, there's got to be a promo piece somewhere in Paramount's vault about this as I seem to remember one being released to promote it)because, while isn't quite up to "Escape from New York", "Escape from L.A." is still a memorable sequel with enough satire, parody and humor laced moments to keep fans of the original happy. Hopefully one of these days this minor Carpenter classic will get the re-evaluation it deserves.
 If you can't make a decent sequel November 12, 2000
10 out of 19 found this review helpful
why make a sequel at all? I can't for the life of me determine why it took 15 years to make a sequel to Escape From New York if this is all they could come up with. This is a complete rehash of the first movie. Escape from New York is one of my favorite movies, I think it is great. Escape from LA is one of my favorite examples of people getting together to make a movie...and just not having any creative ideas about it. Every character, every scene is a total remake of the original. In this movie - Buscemi is Cabbie from Escape from New York, The Duke of New York is replaced by the Spanish gang leader, the President is replaced by the President's daughter and Stacey Keach fills in the Lee Van Cleef role. The scene with Snake playing basketball highlights how low this movie has dipped. The first film had a great - and plausible - fight to the death in a boxing ring with a series of weapons...this movie has Snake pointlessly shooting a basketball in some sort of death sport. It's stupid. Really, do you want to see Snake fighting it out with some Giant or do you want to see Snake's 15ft jumper? This movie flops at every turn. The first movie had a creative, original and just great storyline. This time around - it's all old hat. I can't determine why Snake has to escape from anywhere. If they took 15 years to write this, then come up with a totally differnt storyline and make a movie about the character of Snake Pliskin in a new situation. What happened to him following his escape from new york? what happened when he destroyed the President's recorded speech to the world? what became of this guy? there have to be better Snake stories to tell - than just telling the same one we've already seen but in a different city.
This shouldn't have been made at all! December 3, 2007
THE MAIN MAN (Central Bookin', NY)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This movie is a complete rehash from start to finish. There isn't one original idea or anything that sets it apart. Story and plot wise from Escape from NY. A pure rehash.
The story is exactly the same. EXCEPT. The prison island LA happens to break off from the US due to an earthquake. There all the outlaws are sent to it to live their lives anyway they feel. Then comes Snake. He's forced to go there and this time retrieve a device. Under the same stipulations as the first.
This movie seriously got on my nerves big time! It followed the exact same formula except it had more action and better special effects. He11 Snake was again wounded in the exact same leg as the first. The ending is the same also.
To be honest you can watch either one of these first and enjoy one and not like the other. If you want lots of action and special effects. Get this one. If you want less action with a bit more steatlh. Watch escape from NY. Me, I'm just going to ditch this one and keep the first. Its also weak on extras too. For those who want to know.
 LET'S DO IT MY WAY ! April 23, 1999
wdanthemanw (Geneva, Switzerland)
8 out of 13 found this review helpful
ESCAPE FROM L.A. is, in my opinion, John Carpenter's most important movie to date. At last, he has become one of the major american directors in spite of the fact that he usually works on fantastic or sci-fi material.Snake Plissken is a rebel. He doesn't want to be part of the new America that years and years of intolerance, bigotry and stupid wars have created. It's not difficult to understand that John Carpenter is hiding right behind Snake and has a great time criticizing this future society not so different from ours. And we, the audience, are not forgotten. Remember the scene when a fanatic crowd wants Snake Plissken dead and waits with vicious pleasure for the basket-ball death game ? WE are that versatile crowd, who, in the same manner, shouts Snake's name after his triumphal 10 points run. How many of us have ceased to believe in Carpenter's genius after two or three average movies ? A lot, I'm afraid. In one word, John Carpenter is back. A DVD for Peter Fonda
 Complete waste of time. Don't spend money on this. January 22, 2002
Alvin Tanhehco (Baltimore, MD USA)
7 out of 14 found this review helpful
I don't think I've ever written such a caustic review. But after watching this video, I have to say John Carpenter's films are absolutely worthless. I've sat through a couple of his other movies like Vampires and Ghosts of Mars, and didn't really see the point in all the gratuitous violence.Like most of his other films, this film takes place in the future where the world a public junkyard and rusted out drums used as furnaces line the streets. The junkyard being Los Angeles (LA) in this film. Snake Plissken (Russell) has been blackmailed (injected with a toxin that will kill him in 10 hours) to do the government's bidding to reobtain possession of a Electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) targetting unit (a sort of detonator) which has been stolen by the president's daughter (who met up in a virtual reality world with a dangerous terrorist). As far as movie special effects go, this was just plain unbelievably bad. I've generated better computer generated imagery in school than what was used in the film. Equally horrible was the dialogue and acting of the actors. Russell just grunts most of the time. About the only guy who provided some comic relief to this film was Steve Buscemi. Please do not waste your money or your time on this film. I'm not kidding.
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