Rating: **
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Stacy Keach, Steve Buscemi, Peter Fonda, Pam Grier,
Bruce Campbell
John Carpenter remakes his own "Escape From New York" with disastrous results. The story, acting, action, and effects are so corny that all you can do is pray for it to end. In the future, America has been reformed by some religious lunatic president and he's sending all heretics and criminals to live on the prison island of Los Angeles, which fell away from the mainland during a huge earthquake in 2013. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is apprehended once again and a stiff and unconvincing Stacy Keach infects him with a virus and convinces him to go to L.A. to save the president's daughter who is being held hostage there by some Cuban dictator. He does so reluctantly, and meets up with a variety of wacky characters that help him out on his journey. He finally manages to rescue the president's daughter and escape (everyone else naturally dies), and then messes up the entire world's power grid to stop an escalating world war crisis. Yes, Snake Plissken saves the world and wanders off into the darkness rasping to the camera, "welcome to the human race". Dreadfully disappointing, but it does slightly improve on multiple viewings.