SOURCE: Strick, Philip. Review of Escape from L.A., by John Carpenter. Sight and Sound 6, no. 10 (October 1996): 44–45.

In the following review, Strick observes that Escape from L.A. has impressive visual effects, but concludes that the film is tedious and repetitive.

“Sounds familiar,” murmurs the one-eyed Snake in his habitual Eastwood monotone, and much of the point of Escape from L.A. is that it shamelessly copies the Plissken predicament of 15 years ago in Escape from New York. Not much has changed: the president is still an arrogant coward, the country's city-sized primary prison still has all the supplies it needs to maintain a state of enthusiastic anarchy, and there is still one inmate so untameable that he has to be kept in a different prison, making him conveniently available for special projects. When a piece of equipment falls into the wrong hands, there is still no specially-trained...