Demolition Man

Demolition Man casts Sylvester Stallone as John Spartan, a tough-as-nails cop who manages to take down his notorious nemesis (Wesley Snipes’ Simon Phoenix) during an especially brutal battle – with problems emerging as it becomes clear that Spartan’s antics have resulted in the deaths of several hostages. Spartan and Phoenix are both forced to serve their sentences in a newly-formed “Cryo Prison,” where, decades later, Phoenix manages to escape and begins wreaking havoc within the now-peaceful landscape. (Spartan is, of course, subsequently unfrozen and tasked with bringing Phoenix to justice once more.) Though it’s clearly been designed to operate as a fast-paced thriller, Demolition Man is, for the most part, far more effective as a fish-out-of-water comedy – as filmmaker Marco Brambilla has suffused the proceedings with disappointingly (and curiously) inert action sequences that eventually wear the viewer down. It’s clear, then, that the film is at its best when focused on Spartan’s exasperated efforts at blending into his new surroundings, with the inclusion of several laugh-out-loud funny comedic misunderstandings (eg Spartan’s growing irritation with the notorious three seashells) ensuring that Demolition Man remains surprisingly watchable through much of its midsection. The film begins to fizzle out demonstrably as it progresses, however, as Brambilla, working from a script by Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, and Peter M. Lenkov, becomes more and more concerned with Spartan and Phoenix’s tedious cat-and-mouse games – with the less-than-engrossing atmosphere compounded by an increased emphasis on the tiresome exploits of several underground rebels (including Denis Leary’s Edgar Friendly). The end result is a sporadically amusing yet pervasively underwhelming bit of early ’90s cheese, which is a shame, certainly, given the strength of both Stallone and Snipes’ work here.

** out of ****