In a world where Manhattan has been permanently transformed into a maximum security prison, one man is given the responsibility of finding and protecting the President of the United States (Ernest Borgnine)--who had just crash landed inside the prison. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is the man whose life is in danger and must face the difficulties that lie within the walls of New York City until he finds and returns the president safely to the U.S. Government. This brief synopsis alone is enough to interest many and compel them to watch this film. Writer and director, John Carpenter, did a wonderful job of constructing a story that appealed to many different audiences and set himself up (along with the rest of the cast and crew) to be very successful as a result of this film. While much of what took place throughout the film was interesting, it seems that a majority of the film was terribly slow. The film sets were amazing and it is only fair that the crew wanted audiences to experience the intense detail that went into these sets; it appears that the purpose of many of the slow points of the film were to show off these sets as they focused on Snake Plissken slowly making his way through Manhattan and towards the president. Again, while this is understandable, the majority of viewers would have been much more focused on the story rather than the sets and it led to the film being quite boring at times. Russell’s performance, as can be expected, was exceptional and was nearly flawless. Regardless of how wonderful his performance was, the other actors struggled to hold up their end of the bargain as their performances were less than adequate and because of this certain scenes fell short of Carpenter’s expectations. With the film’s budget as big as it was in the early 1980’s, the film's special effects should have been far better than what they were. As a whole, the film fell short of expectations. With the exception of Kurt Russell (and to some degree, Lee Van Cleef) the film felt like a dud. With the many reimaginings of older films being brought to the big screen nowadays, this feels like a film that needs a reboot. Kurt Russell playing the role of Hauk would be a great way to start the casting and successfully produce a remake that fans of this film would love. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1
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