This film was a big payday for the star Kurt Russell and the director John Carpenter. Paramount paid out the big bucks for Russell to repeat his Snake Plissken character and for Carpenter to basically revisit his previous film. The results were rather unspectacular.
This time Plissken is dropped into Los Angeles which is now a penal colony controlled by a fascist police force and a crazed president played by Cliff Robinson. Plissken has to recover a device that will shut down the entire infrastructure of the world. Escape from L.A. is basically a rehash of Escape from New York without some of the the cleverness and creative invention of the first film. Russell and Carpenter take a lot of the trends and fads that Los Angeles is known for and attempt to satirize them with limited success.
For example Peter Fonda is a hot shot surfer cruising over the sunken ruins of parts of Los Angles, Bruce Campbell is an out of control plastic surgeon, there's a bike gang and a basketball game where the players have to win or they are killed.
Most of the entertainment value is in the supporting cast that was hired for the film, Peter Fonda, Stacey Keach, Michelle Forbes, Paul Bartel and Pam Grier to name a few. All of these actors are associated with "B" or cult films.
The action in the film is okay, the film is basically a time killer without the social satire that the filmmakers were apparently aiming for.
Written by Kurt Russel, John Carpenter and Debra Hill. The running time is 100 minutes.
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