SOURCE: Tonkin, Boyd. Review of Escape from L.A., by John Carpenter. New Statesman 125, no. 4301 (20 September 1996): 43.

In the following review, Tonkin concludes that despite the film's spectacular action scenes and stunning visual effects, Escape from L.A. is not a successful film.

As Independence Day has proved in spades, Americans just love to trash their towns. Ever since the Founding Fathers taught the rebels to worship sturdy farmers with ten acres and a gun, native art has often treated any settlement bigger than a village (or a suburb) as Sodom and Gomorrah incarnate.

John Carpenter—whose fierce and funny genre films have teased the hang-ups ups of his compatriots for 20 years—first touched on this urban angst with Escape from New York. In 1981 he imagined the Manhattan of 1997 as a barbaric penal colony run by (of all people) soul magnate Isaac Hayes. Well, 1997 is just around the corner...