Escape from L.A. (1996)
John Carpenter's long delayed follow up to Escape from New York (1981) is basically the same plot with Kurt Russell's effortlessly cool, battle hardened warrior Snake Plissken infiltrating the island of LA which has been cut off from the mainland thanks to an earthquake, in order to retrieve the President's (Cliff Robertson) daughter from a band of outlaws and rebels.
As with New York, LA is now populated like a penal colony with gangs roaming the semi destroyed boulevards... so far so good!
Sadly this is a film that begins so promisingly (even if you do have a sense of deja-vu) but begins to unravel around the half way point as it all feels too gimmicky and more often than not those gimmicks (The surfing scene, the basketball game) fail to engage and you end up giggling or sighing rather than getting caught up in the thrill of it all.
Come the end, i do tend to think the first half works due to the quality of actor - Stacy Keach, Peter Fonda, Michelle Forbes, Steve Buscemi, Bruce Campbell, Valeria Golino and Robert Carradine - and a game of spot the famous face because we have quite literally seen it all before, with the overriding feeling that although it's fun and quite daft this was a missed opportunity and Escape from L.A. is less of a sequel and more of a poorly thought out remake.
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