Escape From L.A.

At some point during the film, one character says to another, "this is insane!" To which the former replies, "that's the point." That brief exchange is a pretty good summation of John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. (1996), which is far more of an exercise in ridiculosity than its predecessor, the slick, moody urban action thriller Escape From New York. Kurt Russell returns as Carpenter's most memorable anti-hero, the eye-patch wearing, John Wayne-esque Snake Plissken.

Escape From New York was set in 1997. L.A. is set in 2013, and the U.S. is now ruled by the religious right to the point that the president, a fundamentalist Christian, has been allowed to alter the Constitution so that he can be President for life. His daughter, in a quasi-Patty Hearst move, rebels against him by stealing a device that could shut down all power sources across the globe. Then she trots over to L.A., which, after a massive earthquake separates it from the contiguous United States, has become the new dumping ground for America's undesirables (atheists, Muslims, criminals, people who cuss, etc.). There she meets up with the gangster who runs L.A., a former Peruvian terrorist named Cuervo Jones (Georges Corraface).

Did I mention that the president's daughter is named Utopia? Did I mention that Snake Plissken rides a tsunami into the streets of L.A. along with an aging surfer who's played by Peter Fonda? (Perhaps being really laid-back is a moral crime bad enough to warrant exile in Los Angeles.) Did I mention that Escape From L.A. is just about the craziest movie in the history of cinema? Or at least of the 90s.

You really can't do anything but cheer for a movie that so proudly pursues insanity as the order of the day. You get the sense that this is not simply John Carpenter cutting loose. This may be the official moment when Carpenter just stopped giving a shit. (Although some of his previous work might suggest otherwise.) But despite that decidedly double-edged compliment, I'm actually trying to laud the man for showing us such a hacky, cheesy, singularly wacked-out good time. Carpenter, who wrote the script with Kurt Russell and Debra Hill (both of whom produced the film), has always had this kind of B-movie sensibility. But his B movies (aside from the 1974 Dark Star) had a sort of polish to them, mostly due to the fact that Dean Cundey was his DP from Halloween to The Thing. L.A. eschews that polished look, whether accidentally or on purpose, and we get something altogether different. (The special effects are laughable, but somehow mesmerizing.)

I did wish that the female characters were more interesting. Utopia is kind of strong, and there's a girl with some pluck who tries to help Snake early in the film, but she's dispatched rather quickly. You long for Adrienne Barbeau to show up and show 'em how it's done. Pam Grier does make a flashy appearance as a transvestite. (Her voice has been altered, but it comes off as a stupid machination. Grier's real voice is commanding, and it's a shame we don't get to hear it as it is.) There's also a pretty colorful role for Steve Buscemi as a weaselly "agent" who still tries to get work in the new, disheveled, post-Hollywood L.A.

With Stacy Keach, Cliff Robertson, Valeria Golimo, Bruce Campbell (in a funny turn as the Surgeon General of Hollywood, who removes attractive features from people and transplants them onto the freakish faces of patients who've already had too much plastic surgery), Michelle Forbes, A.J. Langer, Paul Bartel, and Robert Carradine. ★★½

3:10 to Yuma

Russell Crowe and Christian Bale head the cast in the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma. Crowe plays an infamous cutthroat train robber who's supposed to be evil incarnate, and Bale is the stubborn rancher, struggling to feed his family, who agrees to help transport him to a train station bound for the Yuma, Arizona prison. I haven't seen the 1957 original, which starred the always forthright Glenn Ford, and Van Heflin, but this re-imagining is a first-rate Western. It's trashy good fun, sustained by Crowe's inability to be unlikable. He's the kind of dream villain who's tough enough to be intimidating but not dastardly enough to kill a kid or anything like that.

The director, James Mangold, maintains a sort of controlled brutality that works because there's an ironic side to all this: the archly drawn characters poke fun at the old model of good guys vs. bad guys. Granted, there's nothing new in this, but the movie doesn't make a point of being too clever or self-impressed about it. We're allowed to enjoy the play-acting. This is probably the best sham Western I've seen.

This movie offers itself up as some kind of hero-worshiping wish fulfillment. Bale's character wants to be a hero to his sons again. After losing a foot in the Civil War, he feels reduced to something less than a man, and he sees this moment as an opportunity to improve his image. You find yourself laughing at this delusional reasoning. It fuels all the drama of the movie. Westerns have always contained an element of wish fulfillment. They have so often encapsulated an obsession with masculine power and domination. The outlaws, the Indians, and the elements become the Western hero's three obvious antagonists.

The actors are mostly well-cast. Ben Foster, as Crowe's right hand man, achieves a kind of creepy comic book style performance. He's disturbingly devoted to Crowe, and the moment he comes on screen he's commanding your attention. As a performer he restrains himself for the most part, and lets the creepiness really sink in and populate all of his scenes in the film. Peter Fonda does good work as a determined old codger working for the Pinkerton guards Crowe and his gang attacks in the beginning. He's go the vibe of a John Carradine: he's done this before. Vinessa Shaw seems anachronistic as a saloon keeper Crowe beds early in the film. She just looks too modern, even with authentic-looking costumery. She doesn't look, for instance, as convincing as Katharine Ross did in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

With Logan Lerman, Peter Fonda, Dallas Roberts, Alan Tudyk, Gretchen Mol, and Luke Wilson.