Escape from L.A. Blu-ray offers decent video and solid audio, but overall it's a poor Blu-ray release
It's 16 years after Snake Plissken's rescue of the President of the United States of America
in New York. Now, a different President is in power, and declares the U.S. to be a land of
moral superiority: no smoking, no red meat, no freedom of religion and no unapproved
marriages. A massive earthquake has hit Los Angeles, leaving it in ruins and completely
surrounded by water. From this new island hell rises an army of discontent, led by brutal
South American revolutionary Cuervo Jones. L.A. has become an anarchist state. The
President deports all immoral (and therefore criminal) citizens of the U.S. to the City of the
Angels. However, his own daughter Utopia joins forces with Cuervo, taking with her the key
to a doomsday device that could send mankind back to the dark ages. Once again, Snake is
recruited by the President's men to complete an impossible task: penetrate the Sodom that
is L.A., retrieve the device, and eliminate Utopia. Infected by a fatal virus, his clock is
ticking as enemy forces threaten the United States' borders.
You may have escaped from New York, but this is L.A.
A legendary director. A follow-up to a favorite cult classic. A star-studded ensemble cast. What
could possibly go
wrong? Chapter skip to a random spot in Escape From L.A., press "play," and find out. A
mess from beginning to end, Escape
From L.A. proves to be a herky-jerky, poorly-structured, stylistically confused, lazy, no-fun,
haphazard monstrosity that barely recalls the greatness of its predecessor. In fact,
other than Kurt Russell's presence in front of the camera, it's hard to
see this as an honest-to-goodness followup to John Carpenter's 1981 movie; it certainly plays out
more
like a fan flick with a fair bit of money behind it, but whether taking into account the lame script,
insipid action scenes, poor special effects, or dull characters -- even Snake Plissken endures some
painfully bad lines and scenes -- there's little here that resembles Escape From New York,
let alone a legitimate Hollywood Action/Sci-Fi movie.
Maybe the film should have been called 'Escape From Blocky Backgrounds and Bad Special Effects.'
By the year 1998, Los Angeles had become a bastion of immorality. A U.S. Presidential candidate
(Cliff Robertson) predicts a massive earthquake will, at the turn of the century, remove the city
from the U.S. proper. He's proven right, and the Constitution is amended to allow him to rule for
life. His first act as lifetime President is to quarantine the now-island of Los Angeles and proclaim
it separate from the new Moral America that he's created. All undesirables are sent to live and
fend for themselves in the remains of the City of Angels, but when the President's daughter,
Utopia (A.J. Langer), hijacks Air Force Three, she demands those people wrongfully accused be set
free and threatens to unleash the powers of a mysterious black box should her wishes not be
met. Her escape pod has crashed somewhere inside Los Angeles, but the President is only
concerned about retrieving the technology in her possession. The notorious criminal Snake
Plissken (Kurt Russell, The Thing) --
convicted of no less than 27 moral crimes -- is injected with a slow-working poison and forced to
retrieve the black box at all costs. Inside, he must face the dangerous ringleader of L.A.'s largest
and most powerful gang, Cuervo Jones (George Corraface), with whom Utopia has allied herself.
Whatever fun factor that might have existed within Escape From L.A. could have
stemmed from the fact that the
movie is so bad that it almost captures a certain magic whereby the total insanity of
everything -- from the downright goofy characters to the grossly ineffective computer-generated
special effects that
don't
prove all that superior to those found in The Last Starfighter
-- might have elevated the movie from "outright awful" to "cheesy good time." Unfortunately,
however, Escape From L.A. just doesn't work as an entertaining time waster because
where it tries to go right -- as in not playing things completely straight -- it manages to instead
go terribly
wrong. The movie never employs a seriously rigid, no-nonsense tone; one look at Buscemi's or
Grier's characters, not to mention the obviously extra-stiff performances from several others that
play a prominent role back on the mainland, say
that much, but the picture as a whole still plays out with a bit too much of a
rough-and-tumble, gruff tone to truly capture the essence of the tongue-in-cheek experience.
Never going
quite
far enough over the top but choosing not to play it completely straight, Escape From L.A.
ultimately finds
some awkward middle ground between
"straight" and
"deliberately excessive" that manages to cripple the movie no matter through which of those two
lenses one happens to view it.
Escape From L.A. works up a frenzy at the beginning by cramming a couple of decades
worth of would-be U.S. history into about five minutes of screentime in order to set up a terribly
basic plot: retrieve a black box from what was once Los Angeles. It can be sensory overload in a
movie that doesn't need such an extensive background, but that's just the first of many flubs
throughout the picture. Perhaps the oddest part about Escape From L.A., however, lies
in its confusion as to what, exactly, it wants to be. As noted above, it's neither all that serious
nor
sufficiently over-the-top to really fall into either category, and the picture's efforts at satire,
similarly, fall into some strange vacuum whereby it's easy to tell that the movie want to say,
well, something, but it never really pins its intentions down. Rather than slyly manage
to comment on power grabs, zealotry, plastic surgery, people that "live or die" with their sports,
or even the Hollywood scene in general, Escape From L.A. simply seems to be happy with
superficially making fun of each one -- the plastic surgery bit in particular -- by forcing them into
the story rather that subtly and slickly integrating them into the plot. Only the whacked-out
POTUS character really comes close to reinforcing any of the movie's supposed points, but once
the conclusion rolls
around and the movie shows a hint of thematic relevance, it's far too late to matter.
Stylistically, Director John Carpenter manages to find a balance between an early-80s and
mid-90s tone that allows for the picture to recall its roots while at the same time offering
something that's a bit more up-to-date. For instance, Carpenter retains a synth-heavy score for
the picture's theme that's pretty much the same as that from Escape From New York
with only a bit more weight and activity to it. The technology as seen throughout the film is
slicker but not quite as streamlined as even that which audiences might have expected of a
futuristic film from 1996. Unfortunately, the picture's costume and set designs seem a bit too far
outdated; parts of the film even go so far as to hint at something like The Omega Man;
while it's not that cheesy, the post-apocalyptic-style tone, off-kilter characters, and unconvincing
sets -- even those that seem to span large areas and go well off into the distance -- give the
picture something of a cheap feel. With a reported $50,000,000 budget, it's hard to tell exactly
where the money went; Escape From L.A. doesn't look anywhere near $50,000,000
good, and even the cast -- which features some relatively big names including Peter Fonda in a
rather superfluous role -- couldn't have cost that much. Unfortunately, the film only recouped
about half its budget in gross domestic ticket sales.
Escape from L.A. lumbers onto Blu-ray with a passable but far from pristine 1080p,
2.35:1-framed transfer. The picture's brighter opening segments reveal good detailing and color
reproduction, but the bulk of the movie takes place in darkened locales where there's less
opportunity for bright and lively visuals. The 1080p picture only accentuates the obviously fake
backgrounds, special effects, and sets -- sometimes to a visually distracting fault -- but it's a small
tradeoff for the increased resolution yielded by
the Blu-ray transfer. Even in darker scenes, the transfer can reveal some good detailing --
Snake's
scruffy facial hair or the worn leather jacket he wears as the film opens -- but the movie can and
often does appear flat and lifeless, sometimes leaving faces looking a bit
pasty. However, it does retain a very slight layer of film grain throughout. Additionally,
backgrounds are often soft, sometimes downright fuzzy and
blurred in several shots. Black levels are consistently deep and dark but occasionally overwhelm
the
image and overcome finer details. The print is in relatively good condition, exhibiting only a few
random speckles that don't represent much cause for concern. Escape From L.A. is far
from a
pristine transfer, but it effectively gets the job done in most instances.
Escape From L.A.'s Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack does a fair job, but it's not up
to par
when compared alongside some of the better, reference-quality Blu-ray presentations. Sound
effects swoop from the sides and into the center of the soundstage during the opening credit
sequence, bringing a fair amount clarity, a good surround presence, and some heft to the
proceedings. The track's high point comes during the apocalyptic destruction of Los Angeles near
the beginning of the film; buildings seem to crumble around the listener, and accompanied by
some
potent bass, this lossless mix creates a chilling sensation that's not a poster child for clarity and
realism, but it
suits the material and the experience very well. The track makes good use of the back
speakers throughout; nothing in the track is particularly engulfing and there are no seamless
atmospherics, but it's a decent enough surround presentation. Unfortunately, most effects seem
underpowered; a motorcycle chase lacks much heft or energy, and while gunfire occasionally
echoes
nicely and spills from the back channels, it more often than not lacks that seamless,
powerful, and crisp presentation of the more powerful sound effects that define the superior
Action movie tracks. Additionally, dialogue is often shallow and underpowered, clear to be sure
but lacking in presence. Audio enthusiasts aren't going to use this track as demo material, but
casual listeners will most likely be pleased with what it has to offer.
John Carpenter has had his fair share of misfires in recent years -- Ghosts of Mars,
Vampires, Village of the Damned --
but Escape from L.A. is quite possibly the worst of them all. The director's last good
movie was arguably the ultra-cheesy They Live from all the way back in 1988, but where
that film works so well with its tongue planted, taped, glued, stapled, whatever-ed in cheek,
Escape From L.A. proves just the opposite. It's a preposterous mess not because it's
unbelievable or dated, but because it's just lame, poorly-executed, repetitive, dry, and boring.
While the movie never employs a wholly serious tone -- that might be its one saving grace -- it's
not as
playfully
entertaining or even in the least bit memorable as was They Live or even Escape
From
New York. Caprenter's got talent, no question about that; how about a
third-time's-the-charm, once-more-into-the-breach with the series, say, Escape From
Miami; use
that Cuban
invasion that was underway at the end of L.A. as a springboard. If Harrison Ford can
once more pull
off Indiana Jones, so too can
Russell for one final go-round get back in his "Snake skin." Unfortunately, fans will be
disappointed
with Paramount's Blu-ray release. It features a lackluster technical presentation and no
supplements that can't be found by typing "Escape From L.A. trailer" into YouTube. This one is
best enjoyed as a rental.
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