Escape from New York - 1981

"Escape from New York" - 1981
Dir. by John Carpenter - 1 hr. 39 min.

Original Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I'm not sure the original intention behind "Escape from New York" was to create a film that functions extremely well as a cult classic; I'd say it's more likely that someone wanted to get the flavor of "Mad Max" set in America, and to just make a gnarly movie all the way around.  The idea behind the film is excellent, and the execution of the idea is solid, considering the budget for the film.  The story has held up well, and even if some of the costumes and such seem bizarre, it's aged in a way that actually works pretty well.

1n 1997 (which is now, according to the film), crime has skyrocketed, and Manhattan has been abandoned as a defacto prison island.  Those who enter do not leave.  Air Force One is hijacked by a crazed militant, who rams the plane into a building, leaving only the President (Donald Pleaseance) surviving, having escaped in an escape pod.  The President is quickly kidnapped by prisoners, to be ransomed.  The problem with this is that the President's presence is required at a peace summit, which will fall apart if he is not rescued roughly twenty-four hours hence. The out-of-the-box solution: enlist the help of notorious criminal Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a former special ops soldier with an eye-patch and a perpetually shitty attitude.  Snake gets offered a full pardon in exchange for being dropped into Manhattan and rescuing the President within (now) twenty-two hours.  Fail, and Snake will die, thanks to micro-explosive implants in his neck.

One of the things most striking about movies like "Escape from New York" is the vastly different opinion of the city itself.  Now, movies that take place in New York often have characters viewing their surroundings with a magical gleam in their eyes, and there's an "only in New York" tone to a lot of what happens.  But if you travel back to the films from the '70s and '80s, before everything got cleaned up, you see that the prevailing opinion was that New York was a cesspool, overfilled with people who are only half a step above animals, decorated in aerosol, and generally an unsavory place to be.  Granted, this film was supposed to be roughly fifteen years in the future, but "Escape from New York's" New York has the ambiance of a dump, with all the rats scurrying around for added flavor.  In this environment, it's not crazy to think that the only reasonable response to getting someone out of a trash heap is to send in a foul-mouthed, specially-trained asshole in.

If you were going to cast a weird, violent dystopian sci-fi movie, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better batch of actors than here.  "Escape" was part of Kurt Russell's attempt to escape his Disney past, but there's also Isaac Hayes as the Duke of New York (A number one!), Harry Dean Stanton as the Brain, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Van Cleef...  That's a good stack of distinct, oddball actors that all bring something unique to what's admittedly a pretty odd film.  And they all pop up one after another; it's like getting a gift inside of each gift that you've received.  As far as the action goes, it's not bad for what it is.  Fight scenes weren't choreographed in 1981 the way that they are now; a punch or two is about all anyone's going to get.  "Escape" isn't short on action, but it relies more heavily on the tone of the film, the grimy setting, and the imposed tension of a literal deadline hanging over Snake's head.  And it succeeds on that front.

Part of what I like about "Escape" is that it's a distinct kind of film from a specific point in the history of cinema.  There are certainly other films like this, and some of them have their own merits, but "Escape" is weird enough, and violent enough, and just plainly good enough of a story (with a really good protagonist with an excellent sneer) that I enjoy watching it every so often.  Some of the cheesiness in it is due to budgetary constraints, but if you sit down and watch "Waterworld," a bloated dystopian sci-fi film that is in the same lineage as "Escape," it's clear that money can't fix everything.  It's fun watching Kurt Russell be a badass, it's fun watching Ernest Borgnine do anything, and it's fun to watch "Escape from New York."

3. 5 / 5 - TV (HD)

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka - 1988

"I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" - 1988
Dir. by Keenan Ivory Wayans - 1 hr. 28 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Even though I've seen (and enjoyed) "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" before, I was prepared to hate it this time around.  Why is that?  Maybe it's because of the "Scary Movie" franchise, maybe I just figured the humor hadn't aged particularly well.  Or maybe it's because writer/director/star Keenan Ivory Wayans has all but disappeared as an actor over the last decade or so.  Also, probably because I liked "Black Dynamite" so much, and feel that it probably mined this same territory a bit better (and a bit cleverer).  But dagnabit, "Sucka" ended up winning me over again.

Jack Spade (Wayans) returns home from the military when he finds out his brother has OG'd (over gold - death by too many dookie chains).  Mother Ma Bell (Ja'Net DuBois) and widow Cheryl (Dawnn Lewis) are grieving, and to top that are being threatened by a pair of Mr. Big's thugs (Damon Wayans and Kadeem Hardison) over a debt Slade's brother owed.  Jack decides that something must be done about this, and tracks down a retired black hero, John Slade (Bernie Casey) to take on Mr. Big (John Vernon).  John brings in his crew, Hammer (Isaac Hayes), Slammer (Jim Brown), and Kung-Fu Joe (Steve James), and they start things by making business more difficult for Big.

There are reasons to admire what Wayans is doing here, but I'll get to that later.  None of that matters if you create a bad, unfunny, unwatchable movie, which certainly isn't the case.  It's possible that a lot of people have never seen Keenan Ivory Wayans in front of a camera, so I'd describe his humor as what would happen if you mashed together Richard Pryor (in terms of physical acting) with the "Airplane!" crew.  The plot here is mainly a coat-hanger on which Wayans can spin asides and random jokes off of.  Unfortunately, the first act of the film isn't very funny (there's a lot of establishing going on, at the expense of the humor), but when "Sucka" takes off, it takes off.  For me, what broke the dam was a short interview between a news reporter played by David Alan Grier, where he was interviewing John Slade.  Slade mentions something about the streets, and DAG starts talking about how he wasn't raised around black folks, and ends up doing a "Dancing in the Dark" Springsteen dance.

And the scene that kept me rolling in laughter was where Ma Bell dresses down Jack in front of Cheryl, whom he's trying to impress.  Jack decides to right a couple of childhood wrongs involving a woman and a family of midgets in desperation.  When Cheryl asks him what that would prove, Jack says, "It proves I can beat a woman and a family of midgets!"  Baby steps, Jack, baby steps.  This style of humor has been seen in the films with the younger members of the Wayans brothers (Keenan's had his hands in a lot of those movies behind the camera), and describing the jokes that come would probably take longer than it would just to watch the scenes in question.  But the details do accumulate, jab after jab, and add up to a pretty funny movie.  By the time you see Flyguy's aquarium platforms or the bar that requires ridiculously over-sized hats (in which gun-wielding midgets hide), you'll probably have already been chuckling for twenty minutes straight.

As for why this is probably a fairly important film, take a look around 1988 and see how many other black directors were working in any capacity.  Wayans pulled off the trifecta here, writing, directing, and starring in his own film.  Just going down the cast, you can see some of the actors who worked on "In Living Color" show up in smaller roles; David Alan Grier, a ton of Wayans' siblings, even Chris Rock pops up in one of his earliest film appearances to buy a rib and get some soda poured into his hand.  And going backwards, getting Huggy Bear, Shaft, and Jim Brown to be in your film parodying blacksploitation films is no mean feat. It's basically Pam Grier away from having everyone you could think of from that genre featured.  Part of this is the fragmented nature of Wayan's humor, but watching "Sucka," you're going to see a lot of familiar faces.

"I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" isn't a great movie, but it's a good one.  It's kind of an outlier; people that were big before and people who would end up being big are present, and Wayans built a career off of this sort of thing with "In Living Color" and the first two "Scary Movie" films, but looking back, it's hard to believe that it got made at all.  The material that it was parodying was basically fifteen to twenty years old at the time; it would be like trying to get someone to pay for a bunch of comedians to make a "Pulp Fiction" or "Forrest Gump" parody today, except only if "Pulp Fiction" or "Gump" hadn't really made much money to begin with. Maybe the cultural life-span is different now, but you'd be taking on material that isn't old enough to be considered "classic," and isn't current enough for teenagers to have any familiarity with.  All I can guess is that someone thought Wayans was funny (which he is), and that the three million dollar budget would be inconsequential in the long run (it quadrupled that in it's theatrical run).  The result is an odd artifact; the somewhat unknown beginnings of the Wayans brothers comedy career.

3 / 5 - TV