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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Demolition Man as Post-Marxist Nostalgia

I've been in Mexico for the past month, hence no posts (not that anyone is out there in TV land anyway). Here goes.

For my money, Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone’s 1993 sci-fi epic, is Sly pretty close to the peak of his game (obviously the Rambo and Rocky movies are on another level entirely, but this is every bit as badass as Cobra, Tango and Cash, and Over the Top—yeah, I said it). He plays John Spartan, late twentieth-century super-cop, who is wrongly convicted of blowing up some civilians and sentenced to a stint in cryo-prison. A few decades down the line, super villain Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), who actually blew up all the innocent civilians Spartan was blamed for blowing up, is thawed out and unleashed on the metroplex of San Angeles, a peaceful, pussified new world, where violence is a thing of the past and everyone is a raging sissy. Since Spartan is the one who put Phoenix away the first time, and the cops are totally useless and unschooled in the way of ass kicking, they thaw out our good buddy Stallone and much mayhem ensues.