Demolition Man Movie Review

Sf shoot-'em-up meets all the demands of the genre – lots of fights and macho posturing, gunfire and/or shattering glass at least every seven minutes, an explosion or two in between, car chases and cartoon characterizations – and those are all plugged into a script that has surprisingly witty moments. As a cop and a criminal transported to the near future, Stallone and Snipes (under ugly blond hair!) deliver nice tongue-in-cheek performances. The film borrows liberally from several sources. The most obvious are H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the film Total Recall, and Kurt Vonnegut's apocalyptic creation, Ice Nine. The best parts of the script are the satiric digs it takes at all forms of polite behavior that new Puritans of both the right and left are demanding these days.

1993 (R) 115m/C Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Benjamin Bratt, Bob Gunton, Glenn Shadix; D: Marco Brambilla; W: Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, Peter M. Lenkov; M: Elliot Goldenthal. Nominations: MTV Movie Awards ‘94: Best Villain (Snipes). VHS, Beta, LV, 8mm WAR