CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (15)

By: Sherri Wasserman
August 15, 2019

One of 25 installments in a series of enthusiastic posts analyzing and celebrating some of our favorite action movies from the Seventies (1974–1983).

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ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK | d. JOHN CARPENTER | 1981

Escape from New York portrays a gritty, late-20th-century NYC taken to its extreme. In the film’s “now” of 1997, the “once great city” serves as the maximum security prison for the entire United States. After terrorists land Air Force One on the island, morally complicated protagonist S.D. “Snake” Plissken (Kurt Russell) is sent in — via an aerial landing on top of the World Trade Center — to rescue the President. Dangerous hijinks ensue.

John Carpenter’s film is as much an homage to the city of New York as it is an action/horror story. Manhattan as a site of isolation? NYC’s always been a beloved bastion for those who don’t belong elsewhere. Difficult to survive? Weathering the city’s challenges is a badge of honor.

Carpenter’s NYC residents — portrayed by Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, and others — are as imaginative and resourceful as they are brutal. We never learn about these characters’ crimes. Instead, we see their costumes, their weapons, their ability to feed and care for themselves, their theatrical and wrestling talents, and the embellishments that they put on their cars. The Duke, Isaac Hayes’s king of the borough, drives a transport decked out with chandeliers and a disco ball.

Snake may be framed as the cinematic hero, but he serves as our tour attendee proxy. Snake successfully guides us out of Manhattan; his alliances take us to iconic NYC landmarks and reveal views that only residents could provide.

You can’t ever really escape New York, not if you truly love it. It’s a city that, once deeply experienced, continues to live on inside of you. NYC’s co-existence of dirt and dreams, and passion and pain, makes the city what it is. Though Escape from New York deliberately overemphasizes the city’s idiosyncratic local color, it simultaneously reinforces the fact that New York’s characters are sublime.

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CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION | Madeline Ashby on BLADE RUNNER | Erik Davis on BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA | Mimi Lipson on CONVOY | Luc Sante on BLACK SUNDAY | Josh Glenn on THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR | Lisa Jane Persky on SORCERER | Devin McKinney on THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE | Adam McGovern on QUINTET | Mandy Keifetz on DEATH RACE 2000 | Peter Doyle on SOUTHERN COMFORT | Jonathan Lethem on STRAIGHT TIME | Heather Kapplow on THE KILLER ELITE | Tom Nealon on EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE | Mark Kingwell on THE EIGER SANCTION | Sherri Wasserman on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK | Gordon Dahlquist on MARATHON MAN | David Levine on PARALLAX VIEW | Matthew Sharpe on ROLLERBALL | Ramona Lyons on ALIEN | Dan Piepenbring on WHITE LINE FEVER | Marc Weidenbaum on THIEF | Carolyn Kellogg on MAD MAX | Carlo Rotella on KUNG FU | Peggy Nelson on SMOKEY & THE BANDIT | Brian Berger on FRIDAY FOSTER.

MORE ENTHUSIASM at HILOBROW

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