“Funny, I thought you were taller.”

Justin’s rating: Hang ten for justice!

Justin’s review: One of the things that I adore about the ’90s is that it wasn’t afraid to bust out a sequel to almost anything popular from the 1980s, even if four out of five of those sequels were pretty horrible or controversial in the end. It slathered these follow-ups with pure ’90s smarm and didn’t apologize one bit. This was the decade of sequels, and we were along for the ride:

Don’t question it, it’s just a guy surfing a canyon tsunami and then doing an improbable leap onto a convertible.

This dude in question is Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a man who’s asking himself if he can make a film franchise out of a semi-popular effort he did a decade-and-a-half ago. I say, sure. This was the perfect time for a one-eyed antihero with unruly hair, no sleeves, and a penchant for one-liners to shine.

It’s alternate 2013, where the U.S. is now an effective dictatorship and an earthquake-separated Los Angeles is the deportation point for all “undesirables.” It’s into this cesspit that Snake is sent — initially as a disgraced hero, but soon enough as a hail Mary attempt to retrieve the President’s wayward daughter who took a doomsday weapon to a terrorist leader. He’ll need to work fast, too, because he’s got nine-and-a-half hours to get the job done before a designer virus kills him.

Snake has a James Bond-amount of gadgets and guns to help with this mission, including a holographic projector. Remember how every scifi action movie had a holographic projector in the ’90s? Yes, we saw Total Recall too. Very original. Along the way, he’ll make allies with a number of fellow undesirables, including Steve Buscemi as a local tour guide.

Kurt Russell never looked so good as he does here, just the right amount of grizzled and ticked off. Striding about in his trademark eyepatch and leather trenchcoat, his Snake angry-whispers threats and projects a “don’t mess with me” aura to everyone with a 50-foot radius. He’s riding the line of self-parody, but I’m willing to be gracious due to his shoot-first, ask-questions-later approach.

As good as the previous movie in this series was, Escape from L.A. does so much better with its world-building. This is a post-apocalyptic playground of unexpected delights, a bit Mad Max, a bit western, and a bit satire on the L.A. scene. Of course there’s going to be a guide to the stars (Steve Buscemi), a demented plastic surgeon (a barely recognizable Bruce Campbell), plenty of recognizable landmarks, Death Basketball, and some highly unorthodox surfing.

This playground is perfect for Snake to tear up, and tear he does. He unleashes his anarchistic angst against both the evil communist gang and evil fascist government like. While the nighttime lighting sometimes obscures the action, by and large the set-pieces are exciting and a stunt person’s dream. Also helping is an energetic score that fuels the techno-industrial tone.

It’s not a movie to take seriously, but were you really going to? You might even have a good time if you let go of decorum and allow Snake to drag you along on this trip through a rather untidy hellscape. This ended up being a whole lot better than what I remembered from a long-ago watch, and I do wish that Carpenter and Russell had teamed up for another to make a proper trilogy out of things.

DnaError’s rating: Mad Max in hell.

DnaError’s review: This is one cool movie — in fact, blisteringly dangerous in it’s levels of coolness. Sequel to the cult classic Escape From New York, Escape from L.A. is just as good, if not better, then its predecessor.

To sum up quickly, the plot states that in the far-flung future of 1998, “the big one” separates L.A. from the rest of the nation. While the country undergoes a deep-down moral cleansing by its new President for Life (Cliff Robertson), the island of Los Angeles becomes the deportation center for all of the nation’s immoral, illegal, and degenerate freaks. So little has changed.

However, all is not peaches and cream in the new P.C. America. The President’s uppity daughter Utopia (A. J. Langer) hijacks Air Force 3 and steals a doomsday device which she plans to deliver to cult leader Cuervo Jones (Georges Corraface), who is hanging out in L.A. Understandably disturbed, the government calls upon the infamous Snake Pisskin (Kurt Russel) to get it back.

I don’t want to say a lot more ’cause most of the fun of this movie is seeing all the bizarre cults and sects that pop up in the destroyed L.A. It’s a thing of pure fun to see Kurt Russel in a leather coat running across the wrecked sunset strip dodging fire or escaping from plastic surgery failures in the ruins of the Beverly Hills Hotel while contending with Cult King Bruce Campbell as the deformed Surgeon General.

The visuals of Escape from L.A. are complex and striking, unlike Escape From New York, where it looked like any town. Here, effort was put into making it look like L.A. after a *really* bad day. It shares style with Mad Max and Blade Runner along with a sense of techno-western fun that’s impossible to ignore.

This is a pure, go-for-broke, over-the-top ride wrapped in a clever, often sharply funny plot. The performances are pitch-perfect, with the exception of Cuvero Jones (I’ve seen fruit venders more menacing). Still, it’s fast-paced celluloid action with a brain — and Bruce Campbell.

Intermission!

• That upjacked theme song still kicks butt
• Oh those CGI towers did not age well
• It’s not the ’90s if Michelle Forbes didn’t show up
• “He looks so retro. Twentieth century.”
• You can choose to go to the electric chair — in a hallway — rather than be deported
• That’s the tiniest DVD I’ve ever seen
• “Sad story. Got a smoke?”
• “America? Died a long time ago.”
• A shark-free submarine? Isn’t that most submarines?
• That’s a lot of doll heads on a car
• SNAKE ON A HOG
• “Whaddya say we play a little Bangkok rules?”
• The house of cosmetic surgery horrors
• “I thought you’d be taller.”
• Thanks for all of that foreshadowing, Exposition Geek!
• The Happy Kingdom = DisneyLand (but we don’t want the lawyers to sue us)
• Death basketball
• “You’re about to find out that this f-ing city can kill ANYBODY!”
• That amazing surfing scene — and Buscemi’s reaction
• And, of course, a hang gliding scene
• “Now you are going to die.” “Everyone does.”