Most critics like Escape from New York, and the lean is clearly positive: eight of eleven reviews are favourable and none is hostile. The praise clusters around Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken, whom several critics call the film’s focal point, and around the ruined New York itself: the production design, the night photography and the synth score come up again and again. Later reviewers find its vision of a broken police state has aged into something close to prophecy, and treat the politics as the main interest.
The reservations are about execution, not the idea. Radio Times and Variety both think the premise outruns what Carpenter does with it, with scenes that miss the drama they set up. Den of Geek flags dated handling of gender and race while still recommending it. The spread is narrow, from lukewarm to warm; the lowest scores come from critics who still find it watchable, and nobody argues it is a bad film, only a rougher one than its reputation suggests.