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, Snake will be pardoned.Ĭarpenter wrote the film in the mid-1970s in reaction to the Watergate scandal. Air Force One is hijacked by insurgents and is deliberately crashed in New York City. 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 maximum-security prison. It stars Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton.
Escape from New York (stylized on-screen as John Carpenter's Escape from New York) is a 1981 American science fiction action film co-written, co-scored and directed by John Carpenter.
