Escape From New York Bluray
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Escape from New York is a 1981 American independent science fiction action film co-written, co-scored and directed by John Carpenter, and starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Harry Dean Stanton.
The film's storyline, set in the near-future world of 1997, concerns a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum security prison. Air Force One is hijacked by anti-government insurgents who deliberately crash it into the walled borough. Ex-Special Forces and current federal prisoner Snake Plissken (Russell)[4] is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the President of the United States, after which, if successful, he will be pardoned.
Carpenter wrote the film in the mid-1970s in reaction to the Watergate scandal. After the success of Halloween (1978), he had enough influence to begin production and filmed it mainly in St. Louis, Missouri, on an estimated budget of $6 million.[3][5] Debra Hill and Larry J. Franco served as the producers. The film was co-written by Nick Castle, who had collaborated with Carpenter by portraying Michael Myers in Halloween.
Released in the United States on July 10, 1981, the film received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing more than $25.2 million at the box office.[3] The film was nominated for four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. The film became a cult classic and was followed by a sequel, Escape from L.A. (1996), which was also directed and written by Carpenter and starred Russell.
In a dystopian 1988, amidst war between the United States and an alliance of China and the Soviet Union, Manhattan has been converted into a maximum security prison to address a 400% increase in crime. The island is walled off from the outside world and under heavy police surveillance.
In 1997, while flying President John Harker to a peace summit in Hartford, Air Force One is hijacked by a terrorist. The President is handcuffed with a briefcase and put into an escape pod that drops into Manhattan as the aircraft crashes.
Police are dispatched to rescue the President. Romero, a subordinate of the Duke of New York, a powerful crime boss, warns the President has been captured and will be killed if any further rescue attempts are made. Meanwhile, former Special Forces soldier Snake Plissken is about to be imprisoned in Manhattan after being convicted of robbing the Federal Reserve. Police Commissioner Bob Hauk offers a deal to Snake: if he rescues the President in time for the summit, Hauk will arrange a presidential pardon. To ensure his cooperation, Hauk has Snake injected with micro-explosives that will sever his carotid arteries in 22 hours. If Snake is successful, Hauk will neutralize the explosives.
Snake uses a stealth glider to land atop the World Trade Center, then follows the signal of the President's tracking device to a vaudeville theater, only to find that the tracker now hangs from the wrist of a deluded vagrant. Convinced the President is dead, Snake radios Hauk but is told he will be killed if he returns without the President. Inspecting the escape pod, Snake is ambushed by dozens of starving "crazies" and his radio is destroyed. He is rescued by "Cabbie", a jovial character who drives a taxi.
Cabbie takes Snake to Harold "Brain" Hellman, an adviser to the Duke and a former associate of Snake's. An engineer by trade, Brain has established a small gasoline refinery fueling the city's remaining cars; he tells Snake that the Duke plans to lead a mass escape across the 69th Street Bridge by using the President as a human shield. Snake forces Brain and his girlfriend Maggie to lead him to the Duke's hideout at Grand Central Terminal. Snake finds the President but gets shot in the leg with a crossbow bolt and is overpowered by the Duke's men.
While Snake is forced to fight against Duke's champion Slag in a deathmatch, Brain and Maggie kill Romero and flee with the President. Snake kills Slag and finds the trio trying to escape in the glider. Inmates drop the glider off the roof, forcing the group back down to street level where Cabbie offers to take them across the bridge. Cabbie reveals that he bartered with Romero for a cassette tape that contains information about nuclear fusion, intended to be an international peace offering. The President demands the cassette, but Snake retains it.
The Duke pursues them onto the bridge in his customized Cadillac, setting off mines as he tries to catch up. Brain guides Snake, but they hit a mine and Cabbie is killed. As they continue on foot, Brain accidentally stumbles onto another mine. A distraught Maggie sacrifices herself to slow down the Duke. Snake and the President reach the containment wall and guards hoist the President up. The Duke opens fire with Snake's MAC-10, killing the guards before Snake subdues him. As Snake is being lifted up by the rope the Duke attempts to shoot him, but the President takes up a dead guard's rifle and kills the Duke. Snake is hoisted to safety and Hauk's doctor removes the explosives with seconds to spare.
As the President prepares for a televised speech to the leaders at the summit meeting, he thanks Snake for saving him but offers only half-hearted regret for the deaths of his colleagues; Snake walks away in disgust. Hauk offers Snake a job as his deputy but he keeps walking. The President's speech commences and he plays the cassette. To his embarrassment, it only plays Cabbie's favorite song, "Bandstand Boogie". As Snake walks away a free man, he pulls the real cassette from his pocket and destroys it.
In addition, frequent Carpenter collaborators Nancy Stephens appeared as the "Hijacker" and Buck Flower appeared as the "Drunk with the president's tracker", respectively, while then-active professional wrestler Ox Baker played "Slag". The narrator was voiced by an uncredited Jamie Lee Curtis. Actor Joe Unger filmed scenes as Snake's partner-in-crime Bill Taylor, but they were cut from the final film.
Carpenter originally wrote the screenplay for Escape from New York in 1976, in the aftermath of Nixon's Watergate scandal. Carpenter said, "The whole feeling of the nation was one of real cynicism about the president."[6] He wrote the screenplay, but no studio wanted to make it because, according to Carpenter, "[i]t was too violent, too scary, [and] too weird".[7] He had been inspired by the film Death Wish, which was very popular at the time. He did not agree with this film's philosophy, but liked how it conveyed "the sense of New York as a kind of jungle, and I wanted to make a science-fiction film along these lines".[8]
International Film Investors agreed to provide 50% of the budget, and Goldcrest Films signed a co-financing deal with them. They ended up providing 720,000 of the budget and making a profit of 672,000 from their investment after earning 1,392,000.[9]
AVCO Embassy Pictures, the film's financial backer, preferred Charles Bronson, Tommy Lee Jones or Chuck Norris to play the role of Snake Plissken to Carpenter's choice of Kurt Russell, who was trying to overcome the "lightweight" screen image conveyed by his roles in several Disney comedies. Carpenter refused to cast Bronson on the grounds that he was too old, and because he worried that he could lose directorial control over the film with an experienced actor. At the time, Russell described his character as "a mercenary, and his style of fighting is a combination of Bruce Lee, The Exterminator, and Darth Vader, with Eastwood's vocal-ness."[10][11] Russell suggested that the character should wear an eyepatch.[12][13] All that matters to Snake, according to the actor, is "the next 60 seconds. Living for exactly that next minute is all there is." Russell used a rigorous diet and exercise program to develop a lean and muscular build. He also endeavored to stay in character between takes and throughout the shooting, as he welcomed the opportunity to get away from the Disney comedies he had done previously. He did find it necessary to remove the eyepatch between takes, as wearing it constantly seriously affected his depth perception.[14]
Carpenter had just made Dark Star, but no one wanted to hire him as a director, so he assumed he would make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter. The filmmaker went on to do other films with the intention of making Escape later. After the success of Halloween, Avco-Embassy signed producer Debra Hill and him to a two-picture deal. The first film from this contract was The Fog. Initially, the second film he was going to make to finish the contract was The Philadelphia Experiment, but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter rejected it in favor of this project. However, Carpenter felt something was missing and recalls, "This was basically a straight action film. And at one point, I realized it really doesn't have this kind of crazy humor that people from New York would expect to see."[15] He brought in Nick Castle, a friend from his film-school days at University of Southern California, who played "The Shape" in Halloween. Castle invented the Cabbie character and came up with the film's ending.[16]
The film's setting proved to be a potential problem for Carpenter, who needed to create a decaying, semi-destroyed version of New York City on a shoestring budget. The film's production designer Joe Alves and he rejected shooting on location in New York City because it would be too hard to make it look like a destroyed city. Carpenter suggested shooting on a movie back lot, but Alves nixed that idea "because the texture of a real street is not like a back lot."[17] They sent Barry Bernardi, their location manager (and associate producer), "on a sort of all-expense-paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America," producer Debra Hill remembers.[17]
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