Rock and Roll! (Escape From LA (DVD))

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	Escape From LA (DVD)
Date:	07/08/00 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wild and crazy

Disadvantages: Sometimes hit and miss

Unfairly maligned as a turgid and stupid retread of the original, 'Escape from LA' is actually quite fun. The plot is fairly dopey, as Snake Plisskin (Kurt Russell) is dumped in a freak-show Los Angeles separated from the mainland by an earthquake, because the president's daughter is marooned there with a doomsday device.

You know from the outset that a misanthrope like Carpenter is just itching to set the device off, and so most of Snake's adventures have a rather doomed quality to them. Among the psychos he meets in LA are a tour guide (Steve Buscemi, hilariously irritating), a stoned surfer (Peter Fonda) with whom Snake shares a lunatic surf through the storm drains, a whacko transexual (Pam Grier with a gruff voice) and Cuervo Jones (George Corraface), the hispanic revolutionary who wants to destroy the world.

As well as the mad surfing, there's a nifty mini-sub, some fun with holograms, a superbly smarmy turn from the great Cliff Robertson as a religious right president, and torture by basketball. Carpenter and Russell, the movie's producers, clearly don't give a toss about plotting or intelligence, and simply stage a series of tongue-in-cheek parodies of action movie standards, with lots of sarcastic jokes thrown in for good measure. And Snake's flame-proof threads are very cool.

Summary: