For those of you who haven't seen Demolition Man before and for those of you who have forgotten this small detail, in the story of Demolition Man, the President of the United States is none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Please understand, Schwarzenegger does not ever appear in the film, nor is he playing any character. Sandra Bullock's character states that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the President and then, when Stallone's character questions her on how that can be, she explains that he had so much popularity that an amendment was made to the United States' Constitution to allow him to be elected.
Now, looking at real life, we see that Arnold Schwarzenegger has become the Governor of the state of California. I would imagine that event alone caused several people to run out and pick up a copy of Demolition Man. I know it brought Demo Man to the forefront of my mind - and shortly thereafter to the shelves of my DVD collection.
But even if you're not interested in the possibly politically predictive aspects of Demolition Man, there's still a lot of entertainment to be found in this DVD. Demolition Man is an action flick that maintains a fairly fevered pace, pitting the most effective police officer the LAPD ever had (Sgt. John Sparta, played by Sylvester Stallone) against his nemesis and quite possibly the most dangerous criminal that Los Angeles has ever fallen victim to (Simon Phoenix, played by Wesley Snipes). Simon Phoenix manages to frame Sgt. Sparta in the crime in which Phoenix gets caught, and both Sparta and Phoenix end up getting sentenced to a "CryoPrison", where they're quite literally kept on ice for 35 years. When Simon Phoenix manages to escape during his parole hearing, the police authorities of 2032 discover they are not equipped to handle some good, old fashioned criminal activity. Their only solution is to thaw out the barbaric LAPD cop that caught him the last time.
In addition to the non-stop action, violence and strong language that earned Demolition Man an "R" rating, the movie also has some interesting concepts and some speculative discourse on where the future may take us. Specific scenes of interest include the portrayal of a "CryoPrison" (Scenes 3, 9, 19, 28), a sterile crime-free future and its adverse effects (Scenes 4, 6, 22), the outcome of the fast-food wars (Scenes 14, 15) and the quest for environment-friendly solutions (Scene 10). One very quotable speech occurs in Scene 22, "Friendly's manifesto". This is a great speech against the whole "politically correct" movement and parts of the audio from this scene have been played on my local college radio station.
The Demolition Man DVD doesn't have as much extra material as some other movies might, but it does include a running commentary by director Marco Brambilla and producer Joel Silver, as an alternate audio track. Additionally, both the Widescreen and Standard versions are on the same (two-sided) disc, so this one DVD should please most movie watchers, regardless of their screen format preference.
