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The crusty rebel venturing into the fortified rats' nest, in other words John Carpenter predicting the position of the independent artist in the new decade's blockbuster landscape. Severe technique sets up the apocalyptic joke, the camera cranes up a penitentiary wall to find the Manhattan skyline, an island for "criminals and the worlds they have made." The President (Donald Pleasence) is on a tight schedule, the hijacking of Air Force One reveals an insurgent's sense of poetic justice: "What better revolutionary example than to let their president perish in the inhuman dungeon of his own imperialist prison?" The vicious comic-book worldview is brightened by droll surrealism, the rescuer is a stubbly, eye-patched nihilist (Kurt Russell) who tries out his Eastwood rasp in front of Lee Van Cleef himself. An electronic rendition of Debussy orchestrates his glide onto the World Trade Center, graffiti and torches dot a futuristic-medieval Big Apple in one of many mysterious juxtapositions: Oil is pumped in a ravaged library presided over by Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes adorns his Cadillac with chandeliers and disco balls and mixes gold chains with Napoleon's coat. (Or is it the Emperor Jones'?) "A little human compassion" goes a long way amid the grunge—Carpenter introduces Season Hubley as potential heroine only to have her snatched within minutes by cannibalistic chuds, tough-chick duties fall instead to Adrienne Barbeau's scowl and cleavage. Molotov cocktails on the Bowery and gladiatorial bouts in Grand Central Station, "what's wrong with Broadway?" (Grand Illusion's drag revue is called upon for the reassuring notion that New York musicals go on even in the rubble.) A familiar betrayal, outcasts dodging explosions for a self-serving ruler: "The nation, huh, appreciates their sacrifice." The nuclear McGuffin figures in the withering final gesture, out of Frankenheimer's The Train. Cinematography by Dean Cundey. With Ernest Borgnine, Tom Atkins, Charles Cyphers, and Frank Doubleday.
--- Fernando F. Croce |