"With much humor and high adventure, "John Carpenter's Escape From L.A." brilliantly imagines a Dante-esque vision of the City of Angels 17 years from now as a hell on Earth, all but destroyed—and made an island—by a 9.6 earthquake in 1998. Amid endless vistas of ruins—think Berlin at the end of World War II—the Chinese Theater, the Capitol Records building, a wing of the Beverly Hills Hotel and other damaged landmarks still stand to let us know where we are. Inspired, meticulously detailed production design in turn serves as a background for a provocative high-octane action thriller that reunites Carpenter with producer Debra Hill and Kurt Russell, who jointly wrote this spectacular, superior sequel to their rousing 1981 "Escape From New York," which, by the way, was set in 1997."