Demolition Derby

I did what I often do before going to sleep – I turned on the
television and scanned the twenty-something movie channels
I subscribe to – and, to my pleasant surprise, I came across a
movie I hadn’t thought much about in the decade and a half
since I last saw it. The movie was 1993’s Demolition Man starring
Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and an improbably perky and
dewy Sandra Bullock – still a year from her rocket launch to
superstardom in Speed. Not only that but the cast also includes
an equally dewy Benjamin Bratt and Rob Schneider, and the not
so dewy Dennis Leary, Jesse Ventura, veteran character actor Bill
Cobbs and Sir Nigel Hawthorne as the great architect of the brave
new world Stallone’s John “Demolition Man” Spartan awakens in
2031, thirty-five years after he was wrongfully convicted and
incarcerated in a cryogenic prison.

Literally born out of the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Demolition
presages a future where violence, sex , profanity and graffiti have
been eradicated by a benevolent overseer. Hawthorne’s Raymond
Cocteau has sanitized the greater Los Angeles area much the way
Rudy Giuliani purged New York City’s Times Square and, like the
denizens who used to ply their trade in New York’s sin city, the
undesirables of New Los Angeles have also been forced underground.
Dennis Leary’s Edgar Friendly is the leader of the unwashed and
the unwanted and is, therefore, a thorn Cocteau wants removed
from his royal paw. Long story short: Cocteau unthaws brutal
crime lord Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) to assassinate Friendly;
the unwitting police unthaw Spartan to recapture Phoenix, and all
hell breaks loose.

I guess all the mesomorphic freaks of the day were making science
fiction movies in the nineties. Arnold Schwarzenegger made Total
Recall in 1990, Demolition was made in 1993 and Jean-Claude Van
Damme followed with Time Cop in 1994. There is even a wry,
grudging tip of the hat to Schwarzenegger in Demolition when
Bullock’s Lt. Lenina Huxley divulges the source of all her knowledge
about 1996: the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. What is
interesting is that while I include Total Recall among my top five
fave science fiction movies and remember Time Cop fondly,
primarily for the late Ron Silver’s star turn as the evil Senator
Aaron McComb, I had largely forgotten Demolition Man. And that
is a shame because seen through the prism of the last decade and
a half, Demolition is a veritable time capsule of small treasures.

First of all, the movie is startlingly prescient. It anticipates both
Giuliani’s antiseptic reign (1994-2001) and Schwarzenegger’s
political ascension (2003-2009). Further, Demolition’s year
2031 is a plausible future where small, computerized, fuel
efficient cars zip around a spiffy landscape not startlingly
different from our own. Then there are the amusing grace
notes like the machines that issue citations for every swear
word uttered and spew like ticket machines at Chucky Cheese
whenever Spartan is around. Also, Demolition’s world of 2031
is a place where Taco Bell is the only restaurant to survive the
“Franchise Wars” – and all restaurants are now Taco Bells –

which is not only funny but clever product placement. What
doesn’t age as well is the cheeky notion that all of our commercial
jingles will become golden oldies on 2031 radio –because in just
fifteen years forward most of them, like “My dog’s better than
your dog (the Ken-L Ration song),” are already disappearing in
America’s cultural rear view mirror – kind of like Ken-L Ration,
itself, which is no longer produced. Still, seeing and hearing a
pianist tickling the ivories and crooning “In the valley of the Jolly
(Ho-Ho-Ho) Green Giant” in the lobby of a swanky restaurant is
still a great visual and aural gag.

Like the notion of jingles as cultural keepsakes, the fashions of
Demolition are an interesting mishmash. The “Officer Friendly”
police force of 2031 wears uniforms straight out of the Third
Reich – benign Police Chief George Earl (Bob Gunton) looks
like Hogan’s Heroes Colonel Clink - monocle and all - while
the citizenry wears unisex kimonos straight out of the Heian
Dynasty (Glenn Shadix’s Associate Bob looks and sashays on
his platform sandles like a fat geisha girl).

Lastly there is Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix. Phoenix is
a Crayola-colored miscreant in overalls and a Dennis the
Menace stripped shirt. With blond Mohawk, this gleeful
performance is one part Dennis Rodman, one part Steve
Urkel and one part Heath Ledger channeling Jack Nicholson.
As Rob Schneider’s peace officer protests: “We’re police
officers! We’re not trained to handle this type or violence!”
The two big action set pieces feature major mayhem but are
sort of un balanced as 31 year-old Snipes is way too frisky for
47 year-old and feeling it Stallone. It is interesting to note that
Snipes is now as old as Stallone was when he made Demolition
and, even then, you would have expected Snipes to really “lick”
Stallone’s ass (in the mangled parlance of 1996 devotee Lt.
Huxley – “kicked his ass,” Spartan corrects wearily).

That said, Demolition Man plays good like a dystopian action
movie should.