365 Days. 365 Films.

John Spartan (Stallone) is Demolition Man, an American cop who constantly bends the rules for justice. After years of hunting down his nemesis, Simon Phoenix (Snipes) he bends the rules a little too far and accidentally ends up killing 20-30 hostages in a fire started by Phoenix. Seeing that Spartan did not take the precautions he should have to ensure the building was empty, he is sentenced to 70 years imprisonment, except not in a prison. Cryogenically frozen, Spartan is due to wake up in 2066, but when his enemy escapes from parole after being thawed from his cryogenic prison in the year 2032, the police decide to wake up the only man who knows how to stop him – Demolition Man.

This film takes an interesting look at the future, where all restaurants are Taco Bell’s and where shells replace toilet tissue, but more than anything is that there is a fascist dictatorship in which people are automatically fined for swearing by machines and crime is so low that the police no longer know how to handle criminals.

It is difficult to say whether or not this is a good film, it will never be as good as The Godfather, say, or even be as well remembered at that, but it’s a good film to switch off to. It is also difficult to judge the acting of the cast, particularly the future characters since I assume they’re all supposed to act and speak similarly, but Sandra Bullock especially seems to just be reading out the lines in an amateurish high school play fashion.

The redeeming factor of this film is that it’s obvious that it isn’t taking itself seriously, and that director Brambilla was clearly having a laugh with some aspects of the film, but I think that with more comedy, this film could have been bunked up from average to brilliant.