Escape from New York (1981)

There's a moment early in Escape from New York where Snake Plissken glides a glider silently over a pitch-black, walled-off Manhattan, and you get the full weight of what John Carpenter is selling: a future so bleak it's almost beautiful. It's genuinely arresting. The problem is that "pitch-black" stops being a stylistic choice fairly quickly and starts being a genuine obstacle to actually watching the film.

The premise is gloriously pulpy. Manhattan has been converted into a maximum-security prison, the whole island walled off and left to rot, when Air Force One crashes inside the perimeter with the President on board. Enter Snake Plissken, ex-special forces soldier turned convict, given 24 hours to retrieve him or a tiny explosive charge in his neck goes off. It's high-concept, lean, and it wastes no time. Carpenter trusts you to keep up, and I respect that enormously.

Kurt Russell is the engine that makes it run. Snake is laconic, hard-edged, and genuinely cool without trying to be, which is the only way to pull off a character like that. There's a reason he became iconic. The supporting cast around him is equally well-chosen: Harry Dean Stanton brings warmth and wit, Isaac Hayes commands every frame he's in, and Adrienne Barbeau is given far too little to do but makes an impression anyway. These are proper character actors doing proper character work, and they give the film texture it might otherwise lack.

And then there's the darkness. I don't mean thematically. I mean literally. Scene after scene is shot in such near-total blackness that you're squinting at the screen trying to work out what's happening and where. Yes, it builds a suffocating atmosphere, yes, it makes Manhattan feel genuinely hostile and unknowable, but there's a line between oppressive and just frustrating, and Escape from New York crosses it more than once. It's a real shame, because when you can see what Carpenter's doing, there's real craft there.

The soundtrack, though, is flawless. Carpenter composed it himself, as he so often does, and it's one of his finest: slow, synth-driven, and deeply moody. It does as much heavy lifting for the atmosphere as anything on screen. I've said before in my review of The Fog that Carpenter understands instinctively how music shapes dread, and that instinct is all over this film too.

Where it lets itself down is in the plotting and the action. The story is essentially a straight line from A to B, with obstacles dropped in along the way, and while that's not necessarily a problem, those obstacles never quite quicken the pulse the way they should. The action is functional rather than thrilling. The dialogue is cheesy, knowingly so, which is fine, but charm and cheese only carry you so far when the set pieces don't deliver the goods.

Fans of Carpenter's work will find a lot to enjoy here, and I'd point them toward They Live and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) as films that take the same b-movie energy and push it somewhere more satisfying. Both of those films have a looseness and a sense of fun that Escape from New York is almost too cool to allow itself.

Look, it's not a bad film. Not even close. The world-building is efficient, the lead performance is excellent, and the atmosphere is genuinely distinctive. But cult classic status has maybe done it a disservice, because going in expecting a stone-cold genre masterpiece sets you up for a film that is, at the end of the day, a well-styled, occasionally frustrating b-movie that runs out of ideas before it runs out of runtime. Worth watching for Snake alone. Just don't expect to see very much of him.

Three stars.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1981  | Watched: 2025-08-02

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from John Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) · They Live (1988) · The Fog (1980) · Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
More with Kurt Russell: The Fox and the Hound (1981) · Bone Tomahawk (2015) · Big Trouble in Little China (1986) · Tombstone (1993)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)