Review of Escape from L.A. (1996) by Xgary X — 03 Dec 2009
The most famous war hero turned bank robber of America's near future manages to get himself caught (again) to be blackmailed (again) and sent on a mission into a lawless L.A. to retrieve a doomsday weapon for the government.
Again. This film reminded me of "Dancing In The Street" by David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Escape From L.A. basically rehashes all of the ideas from New York, but somehow manages to exclude everything about it that made it good.
Russell swaggers around dressed as a refugee from a gay version of the Matrix on the site of a bad goth music video amongst an ill-fittiing jigsaw puzzle of weak social satire and overblown action sequences shored up by some really dated looking CGI.
The supporting cast sound good on paper, but Buscemi is wasted as a kind of post apocalyptic used car salesman, an unrecognisable Bruce Campbell gets to say two lines (literally) and disappears without trace and Pam Grier slums it as a transexual and has to say all her lines through a voice distorter that makes her sound more like The Exorcist than a man in drag.
And Peter Fonda is just DREADFUL. The action is actually rather better handled than in New York, but everything else is just so damn lame, the worst example being the laughable death by shooting hoops scene.
It's basically a couple of old men who were well past their sell by date throwing money at a soulless cover version of a popular classic that manages to look even more dated than the original. Like I said.
Dancing In The Street.
This review of Escape from L.A. (1996) was written by Xgary X on 03 Dec 2009.
Escape from L.A. has generally received mixed reviews.
Was this review helpful?
