Sylvester Stallone: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. John Spartan - Demolition Man (1993)

Spoilers, as I€™ve said before, are everywhere these days, but with the internet in its infancy back in 1993, Demolition Man was one of those films that you only really knew about from the trailer. What that meant was a splendid surprise when you eventually got to see it. It€™s a bonkers premise of course. Stallone€™s super cop John Spartan and his nemesis, Wesley Snipes as Simon Pheonix, are frozen in 1996 and revived nearly 40 years later to a world where swearing, sex and violence just don€™t happen anymore. Taken seriously, those names and that set-up would be nonsense, but it€™s clear that everyone is totally aware of the silliness and plays up to it. Stallone is the perfect choice for the man out of time, riffing on his 80€™s persona and having a ball bringing beret-wearing chaos to the future as he hunts down Phoenix. It€™s a rough and ready take on Brave New World (there€™s even a character called Huxley) only with tons of guns, kung-fu, satire, ratburgers, great one-liners, gore, knitting, virtual-love, eyeballs on pens and people getting their frozen heads smashed off. Add in a "as good as she was in Speed, only a bit saucier" performance by Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne as a plummy villain (English accent, of course - he's a bad guy), and a running gag about three sea-shells, and you€™ve got a cracking action romp with a ton of quotable dialogue. Enjoyment as big as those famous biceps.
Contributor
Contributor

I'm a Westcountry exile now living in Yorkshire with lovely wife and cats (also lovely). I'm a big fan of films, robots, timetravel, and films about timetravelling robots, as well as lots of other action, sci-fi and comedy. I'm currently trying to write a sitcom that doesn't involve robots, and I also blog nonsense on timolsky.blogspot.com. Thanks for taking the time to read my stuff, and feel free to comment.