Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) resurfaces fifteen years after his escape from New York into Loas Angeles to find little hope after a devastating earthquake has left the city an island inhabited only by warring gangs, outcasts and miscreants.

Snake has been injected with a genetically engineered virus that will kill him in 10 hours unless he takes its antidote, must capture the President’s daughter and return the top secret “Black Box” she stole from a space defense lab. Only after Snake delivers the secretive Black Box and Utopia back to the President will he receive the viral antidote he so desperately needs and be fully pardoned of every immoral act he’s committed in the United States. As Snake comes to know just what’s contained in that Black Box he realizes that whoever holds it, holds the fate of the very world in his or her hand.