Escape From New York
John Carpenter writes and directs this 1981 film, which supposes that the crime rate has gone so high that the entire island of Manhattan has been made into a maximum security prison, a large Devil's Island where prisoners are just dumped and left to fend for themselves (though they are given food). This is a delicious idea, though how all the residents of the island were relocated and how the most valuable real estate in the world got purchased remains unanswered.
The president (Donald Pleasance) ends up kidnapped in the prison when Air Force One goes down. The warden (Lee Van Cleef), sends in a former war hero turned criminal (Kurt Russell) to get him out. In addition to a pardon, Russell is injected with capsules that will explode his arteries if he doesn't make it out in time.
The good things about Escape From New York start with Russell, playing an eye-patch wearing anti-hero with a great name, Snake Plissken (every time sometime meets him they say, "I thought you were dead.") If Russell does do a Clint Eastwood imitation (maybe it's because he's in proximity to Van Cleef) he's still effective. He finds a group of people willing to help out, including a cab driver (Ernest Borgnine) who always seems to show up at the right time and another prisoner, called Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) and his moll, Adrienne Barbeau.
Escape from New York makes one think what would a society of prisoners be like in this situation. Carpenter has "crazies" living in the subway, and above-ground a "Duke" has taken charge (Isaac Hayes). But the film's short running time doesn't allow for more speculation. Ideally this would have been a series. Maybe Netflix or Amazon would like to reboot it.
Russell as Plissken came back in Escape from L.A., which I haven't seen and apparently isn't as good.
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