Demolition Man [Region 2]

Searching for new directions, Sylvester Stallone starred inthis farcical, 1993 SF piece about an ex-cop (Stallone) freed from 36 years of forced hibernation to help catch a criminal (Wesley Snipes) who released himself from a similar incarceration. The futuristic story finds Los Angeles a sea of Taco Bells and enforced peace, and within that satiric overview Stallone's character becomes a gun-toting fish out of water. The film plays like a live-action cartoon, and while there is nothing particularly wrong with that, Demolition Man is a rather flat experience. The irony of a peaceable society that both requires and despises its bloody saviors has been captured far more profoundly in movies like Dirty Harry. Sandra Bullock costars. --Tom Keogh