'Welcome to the human race.'

"Welcome to the human race." that line really sums it up ESCAPE FROM L.A is so daring and allegorical it combines adventure elements with a bizarre gallery of characters and potshots at satirical targets such as plastic surgery, theme parks, agents and the imperial presidency..It's a dark vision of a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles--leveled by a massive earthquake, cut off from the mainland by a flooded San Fernando Valley, and converted into a prison camp for the nation's undesirables.Movies like this depend on special effects, costumes and set design to create their worlds out of scratch, and “Escape From L.A.” is wall-to-wall with the landmarks of a post-earthquake L.A. We see the Chinese theater, the Hollywood Bowl and a beached ocean liner, and the showdown takes place in an amusement park intended, I think, to suggest Disneyland's Main Street USA.uturistic Los Angeles fantasies have uneven histories at the box office; neither “Blade Runner” nor “Strange Days” did all that well in their initial theatrical releases. But “Escape From L.A.” has such manic energy, such a weird, cockeyed vision, that it may work on some moviegoers as satire and on others as the real thing. That could lead to some interesting audience reactions. John Carpenter as a filmmaker has been all over the map, from the superb (“Halloween”) to the weirdly offbeat (“Christine,” “Starman”) to the dreary (“Village of the Damned”). This time he simply tears the map up; the implications of his final scene are breathtaking. Good for him.