Sylvester Stallone has made far fewer (good) sci-fi films than one might think. Especially compared to contemporary Arnold Schwarzenegger. But a future adventure with Sly everyone should have seen: Demolition Man. The duel of two explosion magnets frozen for over 30 years inspires with a first-class cast, an original vision of the future and a good sense of humour.
In Demolition Man, Stallone is unfrozen in a dystopian future
The title sounds like a superhero movie, but “Demolition Man” isn’t a hero identity for police officer John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone), but a derogatory nickname. In Los Angeles in 1996, he ensures law and order, always accompanied by personal injury and property damage. So also in the hunt for the psychopathic criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), because a house with hostages is blown up. Spartan is blamed and, like his nemesis Phoenix, ends up in a prison where the inmates are cryogenically preserved. However, in 2032, Phoenix escapes the frozen dungeon and Spartan is thawed to capture him. At his side: the idealistic Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock).
In the future, Spartan encounters a dystopia cloaked in a peaceful paradise, governing people’s lives down to the smallest detail of prohibitions and regulations. Eating meat is blacklisted, as are sex, alcohol and vulgar words. Crime and violence seem eradicated, but is this really a world you want to live in?
The sci-fi action film is deeper than expected
Admittedly, Demolition Man does not develop an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the state and the individual. The film shows that too much love for ripped out eyeballs, banging and explosions. So you can enjoy this film as a 90’s stunner, in which a gleefully overexcited Wesley Snipes dances on the nose of the chilly muscle behemoth Sylvester Stallone, while a naïve Sandra Bullock makes us chuckle.
Warner Bros.
Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man
However, director Marco Brambilla is known as the creator of video installations exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art or the Guggenheim, and it shows in Demolition Man. On another level, the film happily plunges into a futuristic pop aesthetic of unbearably manicured green spaces, sleek architecture and technology. The world in 2032 seems like the pipe dream of people watching the riots in Los Angeles in the early 1990s from their gated community in Southern California and only drawing the wrong conclusions from it.
Absolute control by a corporate state and puritanical values govern this vision of the future. In its satirical bite, this rarely comes close to cinematic relatives such as RoboCop or Starship Troopers, but thanks to its fantastic ensemble and well thought-out set design it stays the same timeless sci-fi entertainment with more depth than meets the eye.
*. . .