Snake finds the President but gets shot in the leg with a crossbow bolt and overpowered by the Duke's men. Snake forces Brain and his girlfriend Maggie to lead him to the Duke's hideout at Grand Central Terminal. A skilled engineer, Brain has established a small gasoline refinery, fueling the city's remaining cars, and tells Snake that the Duke plans to lead a mass escape across the 69th Street Bridge by using the President as a human shield.

He is rescued by 'Cabbie', a jovial old man who drives an armored taxi.Ĭabbie takes Snake to Harold 'Brain' Hellman, an adviser to the Duke and a former associate of Snake's. Inspecting the escape pod, Snake is ambushed by dozens of starving 'crazies', and his radio is destroyed. Convinced the President is dead, Snake radios Hauk but is told he will be killed if he returns without the President. Using a stealth glider to land atop the World Trade Center, Snake follows the President's tracker to a vaudeville theater only to find it on the wrist of a deluded vagrant. If Snake is successful, Hauk will neutralize the explosives. To ensure Snake's compliance, Hauk has him injected with micro-explosives that will sever his carotid arteries in 22 hours. Police Commissioner Bob Hauk offers a deal to Snake: if he rescues the President in time for the summit, Hauk will arrange a presidential pardon for Snake. Meanwhile, former Special Forces soldier Snake Plissken is about to be sent into Manhattan after being convicted of robbing the Federal Reserve. Romero, the right-hand man of the Duke of New York, a powerful crime boss, warns them that the President has been captured and will be killed if any further rescue attempts are made. Police are dispatched to rescue the President. The President is handcuffed with a briefcase and put into an escape pod that drops into Manhattan as the aircraft crashes. In 1997, while flying President John Harker to a peace summit in Hartford, Air Force One is hijacked by a terrorist. The island is walled off from the outside world and under heavy police surveillance. In a dystopian 1988, amidst war against an alliance of China and the Soviet Union, the United States government has turned Manhattan into a maximum security prison to address a 400% increase in crime. (1996), which was also directed and written by Carpenter and starred Russell.

The film became a cult classic and was followed by a sequel, Escape from L.A. The film was nominated for four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. Released in the United States on July 10, 1981, the film received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing more than $25.2 million at the box office. The film was co-written by Nick Castle, who had collaborated with Carpenter by portraying Michael Myers in Halloween. Louis, Missouri, on an estimated budget of $6 million. After the success of Halloween (1978), he had enough influence to begin production and filmed it mainly in St. Ex-soldier and current federal prisoner Snake Plissken (Russell) is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the President of the United States, after which, if successful, he will be pardoned.Ĭarpenter wrote the film in the mid-1970s in reaction to the Watergate scandal. Air Force One is hijacked by anti-government insurgents who deliberately crash it into the walled borough. The film's storyline, set in the near-future world of 1997, concerns a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum security prison. Escape from New York is a 1981 American science fiction action film co-written, co-scored and directed by John Carpenter, and starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Harry Dean Stanton.

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