Recensioni de* critic*

There’s a slight disconnect between the science-fiction and action in Escape from New York, in that Carpenter’s inspired vision of near-future America isn’t fully served by Plissken’s frenzied efforts to rescue a president who doesn’t deserve rescuing. All the exposition in the beginning sets the action in context, but Carpenter doesn’t follow through with much in the way of social commentary once the shooting starts... He wants to show the audience a good time and he excels at it here, squeezing every last dime of the budget for Mad Max -style mayhem and providing one of his best and moodiest scores.

Nearly 40 years after it was first released, John Carpenter's Escape From New York (1981) is no longer a warning of a coming dystopian future. Instead, it's a vision of a bombed-out dystopian past that has become our present.

With economy and simplicity, Carpenter creates the indelible, and in Russell he found his best collaborator. Michael Myers remains Carpenter's most identifiable creation, though it's The Shape's utter lack of eccentricity that defines him. Snake is the first of Carpenter's muscled, masculine heroes, an archetype the filmmaker would manipulate to satirical effect with Russell's Jack Burton and Roddy Piper's unnamed blue collar bruiser.

One must credit Carpenter (and co-writer Nick Castle) for their ingenuity in devising the central situation; but that granted, the major credit would seem to go to Carpenter’s teams of special effects experts and stuntmen, to Joe Alves, his production designer, to Stephen Loomis, his costume designer, and to Brian Chin, for his brilliant miniatures. Together they have created an altogether convincing picture of New York’s grisly future — and all the more impressive for knowing that most of the exteriors were shot in St. Louis and Los Angeles.

Even though the concept suggests pure action, Escape From New York is defined by Carpenter’s usual combination of atmosphere and anticipation... The filmmaker’s cynical sense of humor and anti-authoritarian stance are all over the movie without overwhelming the suspense/entertainment focus.

Though John Carpenter amassed several classics to his name by the time he made Escape from New York, the 1981 film feels in many respects like the director's quintessential work. A genre mash-up of action, suspense, black comedy, and science fiction, the film demonstrates Carpenter's capacity to juggle multiple styles and tones with his minimal aesthetic. Economy is the director's trademark, and it's this film, his first large-scale work, that truly demonstrates it.

Return to the movie now... and Escape from New York works a lot more suggestively than you remember. It feels perfectly positioned between Hollywood's '70s-era political cynicism and the dawning age of the blockbuster. (Far down in the credits, "Jim Cameron" is listed as a matte painter.) The movie proudly wears its affection for crusty Sergio Leone archetypes and countdown-clock suspense sequences; Carpenter was Tarantino long before Tarantino was.

Carpenter doesn't mess around: Escape is a crackling relic from the days when movies didn't need heaps of expository dialogue, plots layered with overcomplicated details, and elaborate multiple endings. So many action movies today seem desperate to prove how many ideas a filmmaker has; Escape is whittled down to the crude essentials, and its visuals are key.

Unlike its spoofy, punch-drunk sequel, Escape from New York is one of Carpenter's more subdued films—a close relative to the still-extraordinary Assault on Precinct 13, which similarly exploited the possibilities of shaking the audience up with carefully planted, obtrusive noise in a sea of uneasy silence. Most of the images are elaborate confections of urban blight, etched against a nearly unlit soundstage...

Shot mostly in darkness, Carpenter succeeds in creating a closed-off atmosphere that is both somehow dingy and futuristic. These touches, along with several solid performances, breathe life into the rote barrel fire-pocked landscape, and Snake himself.

Created on a relatively tiny budget from constructive editing, St. Louis ghettoes, and pounds of detritus, Carpenter's grittily convincing New York-in-decay remains the film's best element. Never particularly suspenseful and hampered by a finale that almost literally steers the plot toward a dead end, Escape only intermittently finds Carpenter flexing his directorial muscles. But it may be his most visionary film: Escape allowed him to build a future out of scraps from the past.

[F]or about half the film, Carpenter's narrative economy and explosive visual style (incorporating some marvellous model work of the new Manhattan skyline) promise wonders. The trouble is that his characters neither develop nor interact dynamically, so the plot gradually winds down into predictable though highly enoyable histrionics.