Authorby Greedo Where to watch:
Hulu; the dystopian Taco Bell on every corner in the future of your nightmares Impression: I always loved this stupid movie. Let me walk you through a Blockbuster circa 1994. First, you head to the new releases: floor to ceiling tile, shiny VHS boxes. Can you judge a book by its cover? Yes - take that Ebert! But wait. You find only empty boxes. The rental copies are gone. Swing and a miss. Now what? You visit your trusty mental checklist of action stars: Stallone, Banderas, Schwarzenegger, Seagal. Van Damme that's a good list! You exit the back wall of the establishment, enter the forest of aisles. You're in back catalogue territory now, buddy. Did these movies come out in actual theaters? I have no idea! Do you see a movie with a cool box? You bet you do. Reaction: Demolition Man: high art for the low brow. The premise: Stallone throws down the gauntlet with Wesley Snipes. The movie poster is more succinct: two muscle-bound, bad boys do the UFC prefight stare down. Demolition Man provides a nice encapsulation of 90's cinema. It's over the top, cynical and its biggest existential worry is living long enough to be bored in the future. A prologue invites us to 1996. It looks like Snake Plisken has a lot of work to do. Fast-forward to 2032. It's like Mayberry collided with Elysium. Everything and everyone is nice. Guns are outlawed. The artifacts are left to rust as exhibits in hermetic museums. The future is about to be awakened by gun fire, quippy one-liners and obligatory plot drops. By the time the last set piece concludes, I'm sweating in bed with a cigarette. I couldn't explain the conclusion if I wanted to. A digression. The 90's produced a lot of great action movies, but 1996 is a zenith of the art form. Sure, 2000 gave us the Matrix, but, in 1996, you couldn't throw an empty bullet casing without hitting a great action movie. Eraser, Independence Day, Last Man Standing, Mission Impossible, Broken Arrow, the Long Kiss Goodnight, Executive Decision, the Rock. What! In 1996, action stars wielded fistfuls of guns and armfuls of muscle. They were over the top and self-aware. The tongue was in the cheek. Here's the mind-blower: Demolition Man was released in 1993! It was 3 years ahead of its time! Collect your mind scraps because the action set pieces in Demolition Man are a prime example of 90's scripting. Favorite Line/Scene: Wesley Snipes: What's your boggle? Other notables: There were a dozen screenwriters and a last minute re-edit before this movie was released. More fun trivia: Potentially apocryphal: apparently, the plot was stolen from a book released in post-Communism Berlin in the 80's. Conclusion: Excellent. Arbitrary rating: One human slushy and a Sandy Bullock.
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