"In the movie's opening scenes, Los Angeles cracks up big time. It becomes an island of rubble in the middle of a huge bay with Malibu at one end and Orange County at the other. The San Fernando Valley is a sea filled with sharks and the ruins of old freeways and collapsed apartment complexes. Compared with the spare-looking "Escape From New York," this "Escape" looks like a Brueghel painting—dense, meaty, strangely beautiful. The filmmakers credit the 1994 Northridge quake as an inspiration."