demolition man

Director: marco brambilla

Actor: sylvester stallone,wesley snipes,sandra bullock,nigel hawthorne

Data Published: Fri Oct 08 1993

Genres: Action,Sci-Fi,Thriller

Key Words: year 2032,totalitarianism,censorship,cyberpunk,cryonics

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_Man_(film)

Description: Demolition Man is a movie starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, and Sandra Bullock. A police officer is brought out of suspended animation in prison to pursue an old ultra-violent nemesis who is loose in a non-violent future...

Plot: In 1996, psychopathic career criminal Simon Phoenix kidnaps a number of hostages, and takes refuge with his gang in an abandoned building. LAPD Sgt. John Spartan uses a thermal scan of the building; finding no trace of the hostages, he leads an unauthorized assault to capture Phoenix. Phoenix sets off a series of explosives that bring down the building, and the corpses of the hostages are found in the rubble; Phoenix claims Spartan knew about the hostages and attacked anyway, leading to the arrest of Spartan for manslaughter. He is incarcerated along with Phoenix in the city's new "California Cryo-Penitentiary", where they are cryogenically frozen and exposed to subliminal rehabilitation techniques. During their incarceration, the "Great Earthquake" of 2010 leads the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara to merge into a single metropolis under the name San Angeles. The city becomes a utopia run under the pseudo-pacifist guidance and control of the evangelistic Dr. Raymond Cocteau, where human behavior is tightly controlled. In 2032, Phoenix is thawed for a parole hearing; he somehow has access codes to the security systems and murders the warden and several guards, steals a car, and escapes the prison. The police, having not dealt with violent crime for many years, are unable to handle Phoenix; after six officers fail to apprehend Phoenix, Cocteau verbally authorizes the police to employ all means at their disposal. Lieutenant Lenina Huxley suggests that Spartan, having caught Phoenix before, should be revived and reinstated to help them stop him again. Spartan is thawed and assigned to Huxley to help with his acclimation to the future, which he finds depressing and oppressive. Others on the police force find his behavior brutish and uncivilized, and Huxley, though fascinated by the lifestyles of the late 20th century, is disgusted when Spartan suggests kissing and sexual intercourse, acts which are taboo in the future due to the exchange of bodily fluids and risk of transmitting diseases. The police chief remains skeptical of Spartan, and predicts, with the help of a computer algorithm, that Phoenix will attempt to establish a crime syndicate, which Spartan finds ludicrous. Spartan instead correctly anticipates that Phoenix will attempt to secure firearms, which by 2032, are only in museum exhibits. At a museum, Phoenix acquires weapons before Spartan arrives, having their first face-to-face confrontation in 36 years. Phoenix escapes and encounters Dr. Cocteau but finds he is unable to shoot him - Cocteau had planned for Phoenix's release all along, and (as part of Phoenix's rehab) implanted a command which prevents Phoenix from harming Cocteau. Cocteau speaks to Phoenix about Edgar Friendly, the leader of a resistance group, 'the Scraps,' that rebel against Cocteau's rule. He allows Phoenix to bring other criminals out of cryo-sleep to help assassinate Friendly. After seeing the exchange on security cameras, Spartan and Huxley review cryo-prison records and find that instead of an appropriate criminal rehabilitation program, Phoenix had been given combat training programs and the information necessary for his escape (obviously provided by Cocteau). Realizing that Phoenix is after Friendly, they go off to warn him. At the Scraps' underground base, Spartan convinces Friendly of the threat and takes sympathy in their cause given what he has seen above ground. Spartan and the Scraps ward off an attack by Phoenix's men, leading to a car chase between Spartan and Phoenix. Phoenix taunts Spartan by revealing that when they originally encountered each other in 1996, the hostages were already dead (killed by Phoenix), so Spartan spent 36 years in prison for no reason. Phoenix escapes, and Spartan arms himself with help from the Scraps. Phoenix returns to Dr. Cocteau with his men, and orders one of them to kill Cocteau. They go back to the cryo-prison and begin to thaw out more convicts. Spartan enters the prison alone to fight Phoenix, heavily damaging the facility in the process; he uses the cryogenic chemical to freeze and kill Phoenix. Spartan escapes the prison as it explodes, and regroups with the police and the Scraps. The police fear that the loss of Cocteau and the cryo-prison will end society as they know it, but Spartan suggests that they and the Scraps work together to create a society which combines the best aspects of order and personal freedom. He then kisses Huxley (which she finds enjoyable) and the two go off together.