Sequel escapes into the bazarre
It has been 16 years since Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) escaped from New York in John Carpenter's kitsch classic; now the two have reunited for Escape From Los Angeles, a poorly-conceived rehash bizarre enough to make you question their sanity.
One-eyed Snake rescued the United States president in New York in 1981. Now a moralistic maniac is in power and the city of Los Angeles has been devastated by an earthquake and become an island. Sounds familiar? Yes, as in Escape From New York, Los Angeles is now a deportation area for convicts and 'undesirables'.
This is where the president's daughter, Utopia (AJ Langer), flees to join a ragtag bunch of Latin American revolutionaries - bringing with her an omnipotent black box which, when activated, has the power to send mankind back to the dark ages. Enter Snake, who seems to have spent the last 16 years having an adventure in Cleveland (or perhaps this is a metaphor).
Snake is injected with a lethal time-activated virus and sent off to Los Angeles to bring the black box back. Escape From Los Angeles is as simple as that, but as strange as this: Peter Fonda and Kurt Russell surfing a computer-generated tsunami down Sunset Boulevard; a transvestite named Hershe (Pam Grier) paragliding in with her troops for the denouement; Snake competing in a 21st century 'Roman gladiator' sequence using a basketball and hoops as weapons.
Just who was on drugs here? Nobody involved seems to take this obviously expensive picture - 70 days of night shooting - seriously. Adopting an extreme tongue-in-cheek approach (lathering on the cheese, in other words) can work in an action film, but this plot is far too thin to carry the viewer through almost two hours. The dialogue is also excruciating; Russell's snappy one-liners run to 'call me Snake' and not much beyond. Is that supposed to be funny? Overall, you could call Escape From Los Angeles a disappointment from Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) - only he's been in Cleveland for the last 16 years as well (to use that metaphor again). When the going gets really weird, the film can be entertaining, and Russell grunts his way through the action with some degree of aplomb. I like the score, which is Sergio Leone-meets-John Woo, and Escape features some interesting cameos from Fonda, Steve Buscemi and Valeria Golina.
But the production is mindless. When you consider it's a complete cannibalisation of Escape From New York, it becomes almost frightening in its dreadfulness. How far down this line can Hollywood go before it gobbles itself up? Feeling Minnesota also opens this week in cinemas across town; starring local box office draw Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz and Vincent D'Onofrio, this only premiered in the US last week.
Which is proof positive that local distributors can miraculously find the space for speedy screenings when they feel it necessary, despite whingeing to the contrary. And why are they moving this picture up? To avoid diabolical word of mouth.
Panasia has refused to show the film to critics in Hong Kong. But let the final word go to Variety magazine: 'Crammed with interminable arguments, obnoxious fist-fights and foul dialogue . . . Feeling Minnesota is irritatingly derivative and comes across as utterly charmless.' Escape From LA (Panasia circuit); Feeling Minnesota (Majestic, UA Queensway and Sha Tin)
