In reality there’s little to say: Snake is back, but this time his mission is in Los Angeles instead of New York. It’s a miracle that he was allowed to make three more films in the next 24 years. There you go, now you know what 1996’s John Carpenter thought of the place he was living in. Plus, the United States is a dictatorship whose citizens have practically no freedom, Hollywood is a giant dumpster fire, and Los Angeles is populated by people who use plastic surgery on a daily basis. Lee Van Cleef wasn’t exactly a nice person, but here Stacy Keach and Michelle Forbes (the legendary Ro Laren of The Next Generation) are at the head of a practically Nazi army. Not that the first film with Snake Plissken was particularly subtle… There was an inept President of the United States, after all! But in this sequel Cliff Robertson plays a fascist bigot, which ups the ante. Ladies and gentlemen, Escape from Los Angeles. In 1996, John Carpenter decided to shout out to the world what he thought of Hollywood and the United States. Over time, the Maestro had also tried to return to order by working on Memoirs of an Invisible Man ( 1992) and Village of the Damned ( 1995), but it didn’t work. Hollywood had slammed the door in his face several times, most notably after The Thing ( 1982) and Big Trouble in Little China ( 1986), and he had made it clear that the feeling was mutual by making Prince of Darkness ( 1987) and They Live ( 1988), two of his darkest and pessimistic movies. Fifteen years after the legendary Escape from New York ( 1981), John Carpenter had changed.

Escape from la review