This Day in Theaters: Oct. 8, 1993

Demolition Man (1993)

Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes! How can you go wrong? With an aging Stallone and  out of control Snipes that's how. "Demolition Man" is a futuristic action shoot'em up between the good guys and bad guys and encapsulates 90s action/sci-fi flicks better than any other, and that ain't a good thing. Both Stallone, a cop, and Snipes, a criminal, were both cryogenically frozen in the late 90s after an incident in which innocent people were killed while Stallone was attempting to capture Snipes. Fast forward to the year 2032 and Snipes escapes during a parole hearing and begins to unleash his crazy crime spree upon the new utopian society that exists. The only way to stop him is to thaw out Stallone and have him come and save the day.

Hal Hinson of the Washington Post:

"Basically, 'Demolition Man' is a futuristic cop picture with slightly more imagination and wit than the typical example of the slash-and-burn genre.

...

[T]his movie actually suggests that we might someday look back on the gun-crazy '90s with nostalgia. Nice try, fellas, but fat chance."

Richard Schickel of TIME found it a bit lacking:

"Some sharp social satire is almost undermined by excessive explosions and careless casting.

...

Ultimately the script's often sharp social satire is drowned out by the noise and confusion. It is also undercut by casting virtually all the psychopathically murderous criminals as minority-group members."

Guess the decade

Both of those reviews kind of sum it up well. Cop tries to catch the bad guy and things blow up and people get shot along the way. We do get to see some interesting factoids about what our future would be like, just as you do in every other movie taking place in the future. For instance all restaurants are now Taco Bells thanks to them winning the "franchise wars", swearing has been outlawed, and people use sea shells as a way to clean themselves in the bathroom. Yeah, I too found this as a non-enhancement to my enjoyment. We get supporting performances from future "Miss Congeniality" couple Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt as well as Nigel Hawthorne and Dennis Leary. But the main focus is on Stallone, who was past his apex and starting to show it, and Snipes, who seems to have discovered energy drinks 10 years before the rest of the US. It is their over the top performances and the lazy story which can't lead me to recommend this; I even skip it when it comes on TV. But for some reason people love it and I can only see it being because of its 90s nostalgia.

 

IMDb Score: 6.4

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 63%