People still love John Carpenter because he made the kind of simple, hard-hitting genre flicks that we don’t see much anymore. His classics are sweet relief from today’s bloated, episodic, two-and-a-half-hour epics. Carpenter sums up a character’s backstory in a few economic lines of dialogue (when he does so at all). He gives you premises that you can describe in one sentence. In general, he’s learned a lot from the monster movies of his 1950s and 60s youth about how to not waste your time. Throw in great widescreen imagery, mostly shot by cinematographer giant Dean Cundey, and you’ve got films that are not only entertaining, but they look amazing on our cool new 21st century thermonuclear high-definition TVs.
The one-sentence description of this one: A hardened criminal badass goes on a mission to rescue the US President from even-worse thugs in New York City, which, in the far-off dystopian future of 1997, has been converted into a giant, high-security, walled-off, island prison.
That’s all you need to know. For more information about these characters, just look at the great faces of Carpenter’s principal cast, a banner line-up of cult favorites. Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine. Everyone’s a little weathered. No one’s a blank slate. This is not their first time around death and danger.
Drenched in shadows, synthesizers, sweat, old school computer imagery and weirdo future-punks, this is prime period Carpenter showing us how to make an action movie. One hour, thirty-nine minutes. No fat on this beast.