ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

   Film (1981). Avco Embassy/International Film Investors/Goldcrest. Dir John CARPENTER, prod Larry Franco and Debra Hill, starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Isaac Hayes. Screenplay Carpenter, Nick Castle. 99 mins. Colour.

   The idea is wonderful. In 1997 the whole of Manhattan Island is a penal colony, surrounded by minefields and unscalable walls and inhabited by criminal scum and crazies. In this inferno lands the US President (a creepy performance from Pleasence) after a plane crash. War-hero and criminal Snake Plissken (Russell), implanted with 24-hour-fused explosives to ensure his voluntary return, is sent in to get the President out. Looking like an attempt to recapture some of the brilliance of Carpenter's first major thriller, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), the film instead loses itself in routine though colourful macho confrontations; it is a little reminiscent of the exploitation formula of the MAD MAX sequence, and is not helped by Russell's inexpressive performance.

   PN