Movie Review: Demolition Man (1993)

Demolition Man is great fun, even if it’s a bit of a mess. It has a wonderful dystopian world where people are fined if they swear, and all food that’s deemed unhealthy is outlawed. And the police are so used to not using violence that all it takes is one criminal from the past to escape to shatter this world’s foundations.

That criminal is Simon Phoenix, played perfectly by Wesley Snipes.

Snipes plays him cool and with quite a bit of humor. Overall, the movie is quite comedic, though the movie kind of gets less comedic as it goes along. A lot of the comedy comes in the fish out of water stuff with Sylvester Stallone — a past police officer brought out of cryosleep to track down Simon.

Stallone kind of sucks, though, which is unfortunate.

He has dozens of one-liners and they’re all pretty bad. Snipes at least makes his “Simon says” schtick kind of work, but Stallone just can’t sell any of these lines.

This movie is definitely odd, as it’s basically a sci-fi action thriller thrust into the middle of a satirical comedy. These two genres don’t often mix that well, but what we do have here is a collection of very enjoyable scenes.

The movie as a whole leaves a lot to be desired, mostly in Stallone’s performance, and the dystopian plot falls apart a bit, just due to this being set only 30 years after the opening scene. But I enjoyed myself while watching it.

Rating: 6/10