Demolition Man [Blu-ray]

Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes go at it amid a dazzling cyber-future in this explosive hit. In 2032 archcriminal Simon Phoenix (Snipes) awakens from a 35-year deep freeze in CryoPrision to find a serene, non-violent Los Angeles ready for the taking. Unable to deal with Phoenix’s brutal 1990s style, officials seek an old-fashioned cop to fight old-fashioned crime. They revive Sgt. John Spartan (Stallone), unjustly serving a CryoPrison sentence because of his last encounter with Phoenix. Sandra Bullock, Benjamin Bratt and Denis Leary also play rough and tough in this “terrific mix of action and humor” (Joel Siegel, Good Morning America/ABC-TV).

Searching for new directions, Sylvester Stallone starred inthis farcical, 1993 SF piece about an ex-cop (Stallone) freed from 36 years of forced hibernation to help catch a criminal (Wesley Snipes) who released himself from a similar incarceration. The futuristic story finds Los Angeles a sea of Taco Bells and enforced peace, and within that satiric overview Stallone's character becomes a gun-toting fish out of water. The film plays like a live-action cartoon, and while there is nothing particularly wrong with that, IDemolition Man/I is a rather flat experience. The irony of a peaceable society that both requires and despises its bloody saviors has been captured far more profoundly in movies like IDirty Harry/I. Sandra Bullock costars. I--Tom Keogh/I