Escape from New York

John Carpenter and Kurt Russel are the Dynamic Duo of schlock adventure. Both this and Big Trouble in Little China are tops on my list of "Here, hold my brain while I watch this," fun.Kurt Russel must infiltrate the prison city of New York to rescue the President of the United States within 24 hours or die trying.If you're looking for deep and meaningful, this isn't it. If you want characters with heart that you can associate with, that's another miss. If you want to see Kurt Russel blast his way out of a city run by gangs and prisoners while sardonically spouting one-liners in a husky, snarling voice,... you've just scored. Grab your popcorn, settle in and hit play.

There's a review here that shows a blurry image of the computer readout and complains that the text is not readable. I have the same disc (the Shout Factory Blu-Ray) and I'm able to read the text on my TV.

Escape from New York is one of the great sc-fi films. Just don't pay attention to the little flaws in plot and logic. Instead, concentrate on the actors and the action for grand entertainment. My wife and I have always liked this movie. Now our ten year old is a fan. I streamed this movie via Amazon Prime so can not comment on any dvd's or blu-rays.

Movie 1 of 1981 and 81 overall in my journey through films of my lifetime.So some movies in this retrospective have been on my radar for good reason for a good deal of time. Some I must include to uphold the spirit of my efforts. Before I even begin to watch "Escape from New York" I want to say that I have less than zero desire to see this. This is one that I am forced to see. What this retrospective has taught me is that years of watching movies has sharpened my instincts and confirmed much of my suspicions with few, yet notable exceptions. I hope I'll will be a surprise treat but I really doubt this will be the case.One thing you can't accuse John Carpenter of is of having a refined imagination. You get the raw, instinctive concepts with little refinement. "Crime rates increase four hundred percent" nine years before the events of the film. Why? How? More laws? Does it matter? What I know as an active thinker and audience member is that: 1) this somehow justifies Staten Island being converted into a prison (guys! It's the future so it makes sense!) and 2) Staten Island can just be a filming location with little effort to modernize it. These are the kinds of story beginnings that make me want to turn this off immediately. I want to think. I get that many just want to be entertained and I get it and I appreciate it. My desire is not inherently superior to that in any way. Where my problem lies is in the fact that both could have been satisfied. A good example would be "Inception." Apparently that's too tall an order for Carpenter and that's where my frustration originates.My ongoing issues with music continues here. Action sequences were accompanied by a poppy disco beat and it was beyond annoying to hear. I imagine that some of that has to be my age. What I mean is that music and sound effects are treated with much greater care and concern in today's films, at least that's my perception, so it makes the music a distraction more so than accompaniment.One way in which post apocalyptic films show the degradation of society is some form of gladiator games. It's uninspired and unoriginal so it was zero surprise when it showed up in "Escape from New York." I wonder if this is too show a dark world or to justify the main character's actions. Either was that's more thought put into than this script did.Usually I can at least see potential in a movie. I see none here. It's pointless action done poorly at that. Not that I thought the action sequences were badly choreographed or anything like that, but rather the premise of the movie isn't authenticated by the environment, both visually and audibly.Pros-entertaining-if you just like action you probably won't be let downCons-nothing to learn or contemplate, you will be the same person you were when you started watching it.

I was expecting schlock. But I wasn't expecting glacial pacing. This wasn't so bad it was funny, it was just bad. And soooo painfully slow.But things I learned:- little gold hoops are absurd, particularly on men. Go big or go home.- 3min of intro credits - literally 3 min - is at least 2.5min too long.- Pacing has changed a lot in 40 years.- the way dystopia was viewed 40 years ago was basically a toddler's room with broken toys. Not very creative.- police commissioners travel in limos ?? to get to a prison site because a random private flight is having trouble for a total of 20min by the time he arrives? Speedy.- But that same pcom will take his whole crew out of a search for the president when one punk hisses at him. ?? Hey dude, earn the limo.This has not aged well.Gave it 1 more star than it deserved because I didn't waste any more life watching it. It was so awful in the first 20min that was enough to cut it off.

This is a review for the November 2018 4k box set edition of Escape from NY. Disclaimer, i do not own a 4K player, and bought this solely for the BluRay and my own collection. First off the packaging - its really nice, its brand new artwork across the whole box and i like that it also matches the style and the spine design for the other studio canal restorations. I Only bought the box set edition of Escape, however it still matches up with the regular slipcover blurays of Prince, They Live and the Fog. Inside is a small booklet about the making of the film and the restoration. It is similar to what can be found in Arrow Films boxsets. Then there is the triple gatefold packaging, its dark blue and has nice artwork of Snake and some of the other characters. It all folds out to display the three discs as well as the folded (and small) poster and artcards. My only complaint is the booklet and the gatefold packaging is too tight for the box and its hard to easily remove from the outer sleeve.Onto the film, note that ihave only viewed the bluray, but i can say this restoration is fantastic, and is by far the best available. The previous studio canal blu-ray was awful and was essentially a DVD transfer slapped onto a bluray disc. The US had the shout factory bluray, which looked a million times better, but it pales in comparison to this transfer. The blu-ray looks top notch, so i would imagine the 4k UHD disc looks even better.The extras are ok, i have not gone through all of them, but it seems to be the same stuff as on previous releases. My biggest complaint, is that the deleted opening scene of the bank robbery was not restored and looks awful. However this is only minor, and its still an enjoyable watch. The soundtrack is a nice touch too, and is a much better addition to that of a DVD copy (as some boxset do include).Overall a fantastic package, and is currently the best way to watch this film.

For a film like this it deserves so much more than we get. I took a punt on this release as well its ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, nothing else needs to be said. The artwork cover straight away raises eyebrows as it just looks off, like someone just went onto Photoshop and got a cut out of Snake and plonked him on the end.What made me press the trigger on this was the extras. They are the same as the Special Edition DVD but with the added HD upgrade I was happy enough to pretend the cover didn't exist. Sadly I was wrong. The extras on any Blu-Ray are delightful but this upgrade, well it just wasn't anything there to enjoy. It felt like I was watching a DVD on a Blu-Ray disc and that is not why you pay the extra money. If I was a fan giving advice to another fan I would suggest pay the extra money and buy the Scream Factory release with the real HD upgrade plus the original artwork as your front cover plus a newly commissioned cover by the great Paul Shipper. Make sure your player is Region Free first though. Overall not worth it.

This review is for the 2018 4K Slipcase Collectors set which includes the 4k UHD Release and a whole lot of extras inc the soundtrack on cd, an extras bluray, a booklet and poster with art cards. i ordered this straight away despite owning several other versions on DVD and Bluray over the years. Let me tell you this - the 4K version of the film is stunning. We will never see EFNY look any better than it does here. There is a little grain (as is expected from old movies shot on celluloid) but WOW.... I kept finding my self sitting closer and closer to my 65'' TV to fully immerse myself in this new found detail and clarity I was experiencing. Looking at the specs (won't bore you here) but it looks like they did this properly and meticulously, finishing off with the original cinematographer supervising the colour grading for the UHD release, for me, rubber stamping the authenticity of this new transfer. I love the artwork on some of my old dvds and blurays of EFNY, so i'll never part with them, but also, I'll never again open them to play the discs... they are now redundant. As a lifelong fan of EFNY, I love this new transfer and to talk about the extras which come in this package is almost insignificant, but a very welcome inclusion. Soundtrack CD, Poster, Art Cards, Booklet, Extras Bluray...... all housed in a nice slip case with fresh artwork. If I'm totally honest, I'm not a fan of the artwork for these new releases - they look too polished to me, whereas I always think of EFNY as this dystopian movie, full of grit and dirt...but hey. this is a VERY minor personal gripe. If you can get your hands on one of these sets, just buy it, you won't be disappointed. Well done Studiocanal.

'Escape From New York' is an example of how a superb writer/director and a solid gold cast can work well within a limited budget. John Carpenter made this classic dystopian thriller on the kind of budget usually spent on Jennifer Lawrence's hair budget and it holds up very well nearly 40 years later. Some of the effects are somewhat obvious - that's to be expected given the age and restrictions - but John Carpenter knows how to build a film like few others. He shoots a dystopian NY with such a verve and imagination that you genuinely feel the threat of the environment, something that no modern film has been able to replicate. Just sit this next to 'I Am Legend' for confirmation!Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken is, let's face it, among the coolest men who ever wandered onto screen, coming across like a mix of Dirty Harry and Warren Oates, and he is backed by cast of great character actors like Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes and Lee Van Cleef.Importantly though, this is a gorgeous blu-ray of the film, noticeably better than the first release over a decade ago. As so much of EFNY is shot at night, a clear transfer is essential; anything less is full of pixellation and distortion. This remaster looks superb and if you're fortunate to have a tv that can handle solid black levels (an OLED ideally) than you are in for a treat.

John Carpenter’s film output is impressive, varying from his student project Dark Star (1974), a science-fiction comedy he wrote with Dan O’Bannon (who later reworked it into science-fiction horror as Alien) to other films such as Halloween and The Thing. So how does his 1981 Escape from New York (hereafter EFNY) stack up as a restored 4K UHD version in 2019? (My review is of the three-disc version released in March 2019, not the Collector’s Edition.)ENFY features a great ensemble cast, including Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasance, Ernest Borgnine and Harry Dean Stanton (from Alien) and, with restoration overseen by the original cinematographer Dean Cundey, the 4K UHD version is the best version of the film we have, until 8K VUHD arrives (insert smiley face). The principal character, played by Kurt Russell, is the believable Snake Plissken (former US soldier with two Purple Hearts) and Russell would go on to play a similar anti-hero character in John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece, The Thing.EFNY’s plot of rescuing the US President (in 1997!) from a converted Manhattan Island that is the country’s maximum security prison is compelling. Moreover, the film does successfully evoke a dystopian nightmare, with most Manhattan scenes (actually shot in St Louis) featuring broken windows, burnt-out cars and scavenging hordes, like the descendants of Victorian street urchins. Indeed, most of EFNY is dark, reckless and menacing and is all the better for it. That EFNY apes the look of earlier sci-fi horrors such as 1971’s The Omega Man is to be applauded, whilst EFNY itself has clearly influenced others: James Cameron worked on EFNY and his bleak 1984 The Terminator strives for a similarly menacing look (and also uses moody synthesiser music).I have not compared the 4K UHD version to the non-restored one, but Cundey’s restoration seems only partially successful. On the plus side, the colours are vibrant and although the film is dark, it’s supposed to be and it isn’t so dark that you can’t actually see anything. So the colour tones appear faithful and the overall colour balancing for a film that is almost three decades old does hold up well. However, the scenes set on Manhattan, the majority of the film, are VERY softly focussed. It’s as if the entire camera crew routinely spent the day in the pub and only then decided to shoot footage. Wide shots are blurred. Even some close-ups aren’t actually in focus. Perhaps it’s the film stock they used, that didn’t respond well enough to low light levels? Whatever the reason, it’s disappointing. I’m assuming the soft focussing is endemic to the source material; if so, the lack of sharpness seems odd when other films from the same era such as Blade Runner look astounding on 4K UHD. (I checked the Blu-Ray version and the soft focussing is a tad worse than the 4K UHD version).The film itself is also hit and miss. I won’t detail the entire plot (read Wikipedia for that) but it’s too simplistic to occupy a film of 94 minutes (plus end credits); there aren’t enough subplots or twists in the ‘find the President and rescue him’ narrative to rescue EFNY from being more a solid B-film.The pacing at the start of the film is also slow. Not only do the opening credits hang around for three minutes, but the scene where Snake agrees to rescue the President ends at 20:18. So EFNY takes 20 minutes to get going. The good news is that from 20:18 to the end credits there is little flab, so the pacing is fine.My final whinge is that cast. Yes, the male leads are great, but Adrienne Barbeau, as the main female character, is incredibly underused (even less than in The Fog). Indeed, her character spends every scene with her breasts on show, akin to that moment in The Cannonball Run, where Barbeau’s character unzips her top and tries to use her cleavage to evade a speeding ticket. 1981 was clearly a more sexist time than now, and Barbeau being married to Carpenter at the time might also have something to do with her portrayal, but I’d still prefer to see an actress being allowed to act, rather than being crudely used as the token sex object.So, EFNY is a deserved cult classic and a 7/10 film. The colour restoration looks great. Despite the slow start, once it gets going the urban chaos looks great and is both evocative and interesting. The film itself has a great concept and is intriguing, although it lacks depth and the blurring/soft focussing is a shame (if this is how it appeared originally then so be it). If you like this I would recommend John Carpenter’s The Thing, which is quite a lot better and is something I would love to see on 4K UHD . . .+ Great idea and solid male cast (but see below)+ Snake Plissken is a likeable anti-hero and is well-played by Kurt Russell+ The dystopian nightmare is evocatively realised+ Colour balancing from the restoration works, but . . .- . . . The restoration and 4K UHD release does not rescue the disappointing soft focus- The film lacks depth given its running time- Adrienne Barbeau is the main female actor but is woefully underused as a token sex object- The pacing at the start is a little too slow- Carpenter’s The Thing is MUCH better (but not available on 4K UHD as of April 2019)