Escape from New York

Escape from New York. 1981 AVCO Embassy Pictures, released to DVD by MGM.
Starring: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Issac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Season Hubley, Tom Atkins
Director: John Carpenter
Buy Escape from New York at Amazon. Also available as a special edition DVD.

It's 1997, and World War III is nearing its end. The U.S. and Soviet Union have suffered greatly, and they are both seeking a peaceful resolution. Nine years earlier, Manhattan Island was turned into a massive maximum security prison after a nationwide crime increase of 400 percent. The island and surrounding waters are surrounded by a containment wall, and all inmates inside are sentenced to life, and the inmates have formed gangs that control the city.

While traveling to a three-way summit between America, Russia and China, Air Force One is hijacked by revolutionaries. They crash the plane into Manhattan, but the President (Pleasance) is placed in an escape pod before then, and survives. The inmates quickly take him hostage and order all soldiers to leave Manhattan immediately, or he gets killed.

A police commissioner, Bob Hauk (Van Cleef) cuts a deal with a new prisoner, a special forces soldier turned criminal "Snake" Plissken (Russell): rescue the President and retrive a cassette tape containing information on nuclear fission, and Snake is pardoned for all of his crimes...but only within 24 hours before the summit meeting that the President was scheduled to attend begins. Snake reluctantly agrees, and Hauk has him injected with microscopic explosives that will blow open his carotid arteries in 24 hours, and they cannot be defused until within fifteen minutes before they go off, making sure that Plissken doesn't abandon his mission, or try to remove the explosives himself. Hauk will save Snake if he returns with the President and the tape in time for the summit...and Snake promises to kill him when he returns.

After landing on the World Trade Center, Snake is aided by "Cabbie" (Borgnine), Brain (Stanton), who committed some heists alongside Plissken, and Brain's girlfriend Maggie (Barbeau) in rescuing the President from the self-proclaimed Duke of New York (Hayes) and his minions.

Recommended movie.