This film shows John Carpenter's film direction at it's best. Carpenter wrote this script after his house was robbed, and it shows. This dark view of a future world was meant to show where things were heading at the time with the crime rate rising as we were heading into the 1980's. Carpenter as always wrote a solid script, this time with help from his old film school buddy Nick Castle, who also was the original horror icon Michael Myers in John Carpenter's Halloween.<br /><br />This film stars a great all-star John Carpenter cast of Kurt Russell, Donald Pleasence, Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Charles Cyphers and Carpenter's Ex-Wife Adrienne Barbeau.<br /><br />Great plot with great character makes this one of John Carpenter's best films, it is a shame they had to cut out the start of the movie when it was put in theaters in 1981, where Snake Plissken and his partner do the robbery and later, Snake's partner gets killed, and Snake gets caught by the United States Police Force.<br /><br />Also a great score by Carpenter and Alan Howarth, this film is not to be missed by any fan of John Carpenter, sci-fi, horror or film in general.