DEMOLITION MAN

DEMOLITION MAN. Marco Brambilla, dir. USA: Silver Pictures (prod.) / Warner (dist.), 1993. Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, stars. Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, featured players.

Action-adventure formulas used in a comic dystopian satire with strong S. F. motifs. Relevant here, the gentle dystopia of the 21st c. has constant computerized surveillance and behavior modification, plus a prison system of cyrogenic confinement, yielding images of the superimposition of the mechanical and refrigerative upon human male bodies, esp. that of S. Stallone. See also for weapons technology (small arms). Generally, cf. and contrast A. Schwarzenegger's cyberpunkish films — RUNNING MAN, THE TERMINATOR, TOTAL RECALL (1990); for the motif of destruction as the reason for being of most SF, see S. Sontag's "The Imagination of Disaster"; for advertising in dystopia, see Frederik Pohl's  "The Tunnel Under the World" and Pohl and Kornbluth's Space Merchants.

(RDE, 09/10/93), Title regularized, 7Mar19