Review for Demolition Man Limited Edition

Introduction

The nineties was a bit of an odd time when it came to action movies. The genre that had supplanted the Western in the hearts of movie goers had come of age, and in the eighties had conformed to a testosterone fuelled formula that made its stars the biggest actors on the planet. Arnold, Sly, and Bruce ruled the roost, and when those screens were sold out at the multiplexes, there were Jean-Claude, Jackie Chan, Dolph and Chuck Norris to sate our blood-thirsts. Come the nineties though, that formula was getting tired, and studios started experimenting to find new ways to keep bums on seats. Throwing in extra challenges was one idea; hero, villains and mountains led to Cliffhanger. Casting an unlikely actor as an action hero gave us Speed (it’s hard to remember now that John Wick was once Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan). The nineties ended, and the classic action movie gave way to the comic book movie, and we’ve rarely looked back. Another experiment that was tried in 1993 was making action movies meta. While Arnie gave us Last Action Hero, Sly gave us Demolition Man...


The criminals ruled Los Angeles in 1996, and top of the tree of villainy was one Simon Phoenix, depraved and sadistic. It took one man to bring Phoenix to justice, brutal cop John Spartan, nicknamed the Demolition Man for his tendency to leave ruins in his wake. But as Phoenix was arrested, he framed Spartan for murder, and both of them wound up in prison. In the distant future of 1996, they’d perfected cryogenic suspension, and both Phoenix and Spartan received lengthy sentences as ice-cubes, to be rehabilitated by mental programming while the decades passed.


In 2032, Simon Phoenix escapes from the cryo-penitentiary, and goes back to his old ways of murder and larceny. But in the pacified, crime free utopia future world of San Angeles, the police have no idea how to handle a criminal like Simon Phoenix. Their only hope is to thaw out John Spartan in the hope that he can recapture Phoenix. But it turns out that John Spartan is even more out of place in 2032 than his quarry.

The Disc

Extras

The disc boots to an animated menu, and your first choice is between the US version of the film (Taco Bell), and the International Version (Pizza Hut). The runtime for both versions is the same.

One reason why it’s worth double dipping on Demolition Man is that for the first time in over thirty years, we get extra features on the disc, besides the original audio commentary; indeed this time we kick off with three audio commentaries.

Audio commentary with director Marco Brambilla & screenwriter Daniel Waters (2024)
Audio commentary with film critic Mike White (2024)
Audio commentary with director Marco Brambilla and producer Joel Silver

Somewhere Over the Rambo (17:01)
Demolition Design (14:14)
Cryo Action (5:53)
Biggs’ Body Shoppe (5:46)
Tacos and Hockey Pucks (9:55)
Theatrical Trailer (2:06)
Image Gallery

I haven’t seen the retail release to comment on any physical extras or the packaging.

Conclusion

Demolition Man is mindless, escapist fun, a comic book movie adaptation of a comic book that doesn’t actually exist, years before comic book movies became the mainstay of the multiplex. Heroes, villains, an elaborate future world, lots of culture clash comedy, and plenty of action all make for a satisfying two hours, viscerally, if not intellectually. It’s fun, and a lot of that is down to the out of place nineties man in twenty-thirties America, and a lot of it is down to Wesley Snipes delightfully chewing the scenery as the bottle-blond heterochromic Simon Phoenix. This was back when action movies had to get the one-liners right, and Demolition Man is full of them, entertaining if not quite quotable.


Action movies tended to boil down to a confrontation between hero and villain, a one-on-one testosterone fuelled battle to the death, and normally that’s okay. But in Demolition Man it serves as a detriment, simply down to the world-building that the film accomplishes, and then squanders. You get to see this interesting, sanitised, future world, where everything bad is illegal, and it all looks tremendously pleasant, on the surface. That’s until you meet Raymond Cocteau, the architect of this future world, who will do anything to maintain and advance his vision. He’s the true villain of the piece, and those that oppose him, the Scraps, live in the underworld in comparative philosophical freedom, but have to struggle to stay alive. That’s the interesting conflict in Demolition Man, but it doesn’t sustain to the end of the film, with Cocteau exiting early from proceedings. It has to be the stars that carry the climax, but I find that my attention always seems to drift for Spartan vs. Phoenix in the cryo-prison at the end. The rest of the film is a whole lot of fun though.


Demolition Man is still watchable though, and does still offer a great deal of entertainment, and this Blu-ray lets you see it as good as it gets in HD resolution; offering decent extra features with the film for the first time. Of course there is the 4k UHD if you’re 4k capable which will be even better. Otherwise you can get this Demolition Man Blu-ray direct from Arrow Video’s webstore, or from mainstream retailers.