Demolition Man (1993) presents a utopian view of the future. Everyone is fed, clothed, healthy, employed, happy. In fact, it is illegal to not be happy. Or to do anything unhealthy. No unhealthy people (including missing limbs, in wheelchair, elderly, etc.) are ever seen. There is no (visible) crime.
Of course, free thought is non-existent...and there ARE hungry people, they are just kept out of sight under the veneer of the new city streets. The crime is graffiti and it is instantly painted or white washed over.
However, control is not complete enough for Dr. Raymond Cocteau...he takes as a personal affront the graffiti...and also the existence of the man (Eric Friendly, played by Dennis Leary) responsible for the graffiti, for stealing food...and to some extent, for being dirty and grungy in a utopian world...so he brings psycopathic killer Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) out of his cryogenic imprisonment. He also equips Phoenix with a set of tools to make him more dangerous. Computer override codes, things of that nature.
Phoenix had been imprisoned by John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone). He had been tracking Phoenix for 2 years and now had his chance to catch him. With the phrase "Send a maniac to catch a maniac" he launches himself out of ahelicopter to engage Phoenix and his gang inside a warehouse. Their apocalyptic battle had been started over Phoenix taking hostage 38 bus passengers. During their battle a block-sized building was destroyed in an explosion set off the Phoenix...however, Spartan, who has a reputation for destruction, received the blame for both the destruction and the death of the 38 passengers. This led to his fall from grace and imprisonment in the cryongenic prison as well.
The modern, utopian cops prove unable to cope with Phoenix. During his initial escape the computer reports a "187" and none of the rather extensively staffed police force comprehends what it means...it has not happened during their term of service. They have to look it up and find it is an MDK...a Murder Death Kill. So genteel have the cops become they have to have the computer walk through how to approach a criminal...ANY criminal. The voice instructs them to approach him and in a firm voice instruct him to lay down. When he ignores them, they are shocked and unsure what to do. The voice instructs them to use an "even firmer voice". Phoenix responds by killing 5 or 6 cops with his bare hands.
As he continues to run rampant in the city Lt. Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) suggests de-freezing Spartan. She is already on thin ice since she once said she wished "something" would happen. This radical, borderline criminal content is amplified by her possession of contraband material such as a movie poster from Lethal Weapon which has a depiction of a gun. Her suggestion is taken and Spartan is brought back.
It is immediately clear he is a man out of place. He rapidly aquires demerits for using curse words. His approach is "uncivilized" and barbaric.But he also is the only one capable of dealing with Phoenix. He successfully predicts Phoenix will go to the museum to get a gun. He goes there himself and, while unable to defeat Phoenix, he is able to do what no other cop has managed...he survives the encounter, albeit only by destroying half the museum. In addition, he further illustrates the difference between the "past" and the present by finding and using a muscle car from the 60s to chase the modern cop car driving Phoenix.
After the chase Huxley takes Spartan to his new apartment...but first they stop by hers to engage in sex. Of course, her version of sex is the two of them putting on helmets which transfer sensations and visions to their heads...slightly different than his more...intimate thoughts. But touch is quite forbidden in this utopia.
Throughout the film Spartan is called a "relic", a "fossil", a brute, clearly put in his place as a man out of his element, unfit for the modern, civilized, perfect world of this austere Utopia. This is done by Cocteau, by Police Chief George Earl, and even by Huxley in her anger and hurt that he would think , much less participate, about bodily fluids transfers. It is made eminently clear that as soon as he has dealt with the undealable with...Phoenix...he will be returned to where he belongs, the cryogenic prison.
But it is only Spartan who can predict the attack on the Taco Bell food trucks (all restaurants are named Taco Bell). With his typical efficiency he disrupts the attack by destruction...but ceases his attempted capture of the "villains" when he discovers their crime is stealing food because they are starving to death. Again...this earns him reprimands as he is out of step with modernity.
This leads to the final apocalyptic confrontation. Phoenix, unable to murder Cocteau himself because of programming imprinted in him, has one of the henchman he had convinced Cocteau to release do the job. Spartan bursts in on them and a ferocious battle ensues. Naturally Spartan ends up killing all his opponents after once more saying, "Send a maniac to catch a maniac".
Now, with the corrupt Cocteau dead, the utopian world disrupted, the dark underside of people, led by Eric Friendly (Dennis Leary), again part of the community even though they want to eat meant, smoke cigars, drink beer and so forth, once they emerge on the street the overwhelmed police are not sure what to do. Who will tell them what to do, who will tell them where to go?
It doesn't matter as illustrated by Spartan sweeping Huxley into his arms and kissing her. Instantly her perception of A"bodily fluid transfers" is altered and Spartan is a hero.
The iconography is dark and potentially disturbing. Obviously Stallone will be the higher billed anytime he is in a movie with Snipes...and he has a history of appearing in Utopian films (Judge Dredd (1995) comes readily to mind) that continued after Demolition Man.
We should start with Snipes. Snipes does an excellent job of portraying a faintly cartoonish yet eminently threatening. What is disturbing is he is not just the most prominent non-white character in the film...he also selects primarily other blacks for henchmen...universally criminal. His prominent (and oft-referred to) jarringly dyed blind hair (and it is particularly good dye...not fading even the least during the 36 years he is frozen) is part of his calling card. From the standpoint of iconography then he is a black man trying to be something he is not and therefore evil....he is a disruption to society that society cannot handle. Furthermore, rather than "reforming" him he is instead pushed into even greater depths of evil and when faced with an evil act he is not allowed to commit because of the internal checks he has received he subverts those inhibitors by coercing another person to commit his evil deed. His violence is mindless and pointless...there can be no redemption for Phoenix.
By contrast, Spartan also wreakes massive destruction and he also is out of place...in a perfect society. However, the pefect society is, of course flawed...they just don't know it until he has blown up half the city, killed the evildoers and, most of all, been told by Phoenix that the hostages, contrary to what he had said at the trial, were dead before Spartan ever entered the building. So in a foreshadoing of the claim by Stallone as Dredd, "The evidence has been falsified!", the claim of Spartan is true...he is actually innocent and, in that admission, finds redemption.
Now that he has purified the city through violence and received personal redemption by proving to himself he is innocent he is accepted by the food-starved rebels, the police, and is able to physically kiss (and, by none too subtle inference, perform other "bodily fluid transfer" activities) Huxley. By killing the "unacceptable members" of society he proves his worth and is redeemed for his destructiveness.
4 years ago
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