Demolition Man (1993)

We’re Police Officers!  We’re Not Trained to Handle This Kind of Violence!

When the request for today’s movie came from my friend Loni, I says “Fuck yes.”  I not only know this movie, but I dig on this movie hardcore to the max.  Is this a smart movie?  Hell no!  Is it comprised solely of the greatest actors of our time?  Not by a long shot!  Does it have a good message?  No, not really.  But is it fun?  Shit yes.  A big dumb action movie if there ever was one, I give you my review of Demolition Man, written by Peter M. Lenkov, Robert Scott Reneau, and Daniel Waters, directed by Marco Brambilla, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Bob Gunton, Denis Leary, Glenn Shadix, Benjamin Bratt, Bill Cobbs, Rob Schneider, Jesse Ventura, and Grand L. Bush.

LA is a pretty shitty place in 1996.  I don’t say “This movie’s version of LA” ’cause LA is still a pretty shitty place.  Either way, violent criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) is holding a bunch of people hostage and only one person is willing to do anything about it.  That man is Detective John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone).  This badass mamma jamma busts in on Phoenix and starts whooping that ass, getting the building completely destroyed in the fray.  Turns out that Phoenix’s hostages were not as dead as he led Spartan to believe, and Spartan is now responsible for their deaths.  Both men get put into cryogenic prison, Spartan for 70 years, Phoenix for life.  Somehow, in 2032, Phoenix comes up for parole first, and uses that (plus some new skills of mysterious origin) to escape.  The world has become such a peaceful place and none of them know how to deal with Phoenix’s level of violence.  Policeman Zachary Lamb (Bill Cobbs) suggests that Spartan be thawed out, being the best person at dealing with Phoenix.  Obsessed with the old days, Lieutenant Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) is totally on board.  Chief George Earle (Bob Gunton) is less enthused.  But the man that saved the world and made it so safe for everyone, Doctor Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne), told the Chief he could do anything within his power to stop Phoenix, and so Spartan is revived.  Spartan needs to figure out this new time, while simultaneously trying to stop Phoenix from killing Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary), who he feels strangely compelled to kill for some odd reason.

Not a smart movie, but definitely a fun movie.  Many critics would hate on this movie for somewhat predictable story, some pretty awful dialogue, and mediocre performances, but that’s not what I offer you.  I speak for the Every Man, for the working class.  I dig this movie for it’s action and it’s fun.  No one goes into this movie expecting to be blown away, but instead to see lots of people get blown away.  There’s a lot of stuff you expect from this movie, and they don’t shy away from giving it to you.  The characters all have one personality trait because that’s all they need.  They love to throw out one-liners, which are hit and miss, and Bullock is going to throw them out, but get them very wrong.  When Sly says “You’re on TV” before hitting Snipes with a TV set, that’s not a great line.  When Simon says “You’re dead” and Sly says “You forgot to say ‘Simon says'” before electrocuting him, that works.  When Bullock says “Let’s go down there and blow this guy”, apparently having forgotten “away” at the end, I couldn’t help but think the movie would have been more interesting if Bullock and Sly went down their and blew Snipes, Brown Bunny style!  I don’t want to see it, but you couldn’t say the movie didn’t surprise you.  I think Sly may have also responded to “See you in Hell” with a super-stinging “Not” retort.  This was part of the dialogue during the last battle between Phoenix and Spartan, where the dialogue just seemed to have been taken out of a “What you’d expect to hear in an action movie” book and randomly thrown together, with no regard to if they made sense.  I really liked when Sly says “You’re gonna regret this the rest of your life.  Both seconds of it”.  I also thought it was really funny that they were talking about Schwarzenegger having been president, which was such a ridiculous concept in 1993.  Not as ridiculous to us in 2012, especially the ones of us from California.  The story of the movie will not surprise you, but you’ll probably enjoy it.  It’s just a fun movie.  It’s like a classic action movie that was going on in the background of Back to the Future Part 2.  They try to throw a little ill-conceived message in the end about not wanting the world to be so overly safe that you can’t be who you want to be, but there should be SOME control.  It’s a bit “Duh”, but they don’t waste too much of your time beating you over the head with it.  It actually looks pretty good too.  It does look fairly futuristic, and throws a couple of cool ideas in there.  They got a good deal of mileage out of the swear machine, cool stun batons, and self driving cars.  Pretty interesting and good looking.

This movie does not raise many deep, philosophical questions, but one certainly has stuck with me since I first saw the movie: How do the three seashells work?  I have a couple theories.  The first, and most obvious, is that the shells are for scooping.  Scoop once for each cheek, and one right down the middle.  This would seem rather unsanitary, so I would assume they’re replaced into some kind of cleaning apparatus that completely disinfects them.  This doesn’t seem like the best butt-cleaning solution because it’s really not much better than what we do now with toilet paper.  Perhaps better for the environment that we’re not wasting paper, but I assume much worse because they’re reused.  Another solution could be that these seashells weren’t actually seashells.  Spartan could have seen something that resembled seashells and his neanderthal brain turned it into seashells.  Perhaps a series of sponges or (and more hygienically) three seashell-shaped squeeze bottles filled with cleaning and disinfecting solution.  Some theories on the interwebs assume that these seashells could, perhaps, actually be buttons that activate various stages of an elaborate bidet system.  This would be very hygienic, but would probably be something Spartan could have discovered.  There are some questions the world may never know the answer to, but we do have 20 years to figure that out.

Back to the review!  The performances were what you expect out of this movie.  Not great, but entertaining.  Sly is in great shape in the movie, and lays a nice whoopin when it’s called for.  He also pulls off being very puzzled by 2032.  I could’ve done without having to see his ass and nuts when he was getting frozen, though.  Snipes does a good deal of crazy in the movie as well.  Sandra Bullock was the standout performance in the movie for me.  She had a pretty adorable childlike innocence to her that I really liked.  It also helps that she’s pretty.  But she’s also kind of a whore.  I mean, the chick mentally fucks Sly on the first date!  I need a woman that respects herself, not some mind-slut!

Demolition Man definitely holds up for me.  It’s the kind of big stupid fun you need sometimes.  Fine story, hit and miss dialogue, cool action, and exactly the performances the movie calls for.  It doesn’t aim to change the world, and barely tries to mean something.  It just wants to entertain you, and I’m happy to say it does every time.  I haven’t looked into how YOU can watch this movie, because it wasn’t necessary.  It was already in my collection.  Demolition Man gets “Looks like there’s a new shepherd in town” out of “Take this job and shovel it.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!

Red Planet (2000)

Fuck This Planet!

The worst thing I could do now is come out of the October Horror-thon with a bad movie. That being the case, I offer to you my review of Red Planet. … DAMNIT! Oh well, I can make this work. I have no idea what compelled me to purchase this movie on BluRay beyond the fact that it was $5, but I done it and now you can read about it. Red Planet was directed by Antony Hoffman (which you should not read as Anthony Hopkins like I did), and stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Val Kilmer, Benjamin Bratt, Tom Sizemore, Simon Baker, and Terence Stamp.

The year is 2056, Earth is in the middle of a crisis because of pollution and overpopulation. The opening narration goes on and on about these things, but I’ve broken it down for you so you can skip into the movie about 5 minutes. A crew is being sent to check on the terraforming of Mars that they initiated 20 years earlier by throwing a frat boy’s fridge up there and letting algae grow, which should create oxygen and give us a new planet to fuck up. This team is comprised of potential lesbian commander Kate Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss), space janitor Robby Gallagher (Val Kilmer), cocky pilot Ted Santen (Benjamin Bratt), teammate killer Chip Pettengill (Simon Baker), douchey know-it-all Quinn Burchenal (Tom Sizemore), and rambling old man Bud Chantillas (Terence Stamp). A solar flare messes up their systems on their ship, causing the team to have to leave without their commander. Once they land, they start slowly dying off in various ways until only Val Kilmer escapes. The end.

I am comfortable confessing that, it turns out, I only bought this movie because I thought it was Mission to Mars. I was wrong. Not that either of them are good movies, but it was the corniness I wanted as opposed to the corniness I didn’t want at the moment. If I remember Mission to Mars correctly, I’m pretty sure there’s some nonsense they end up finding about aliens having been there before and leaving something in the face on Mars. THAT’S the corny Mars movie I wanted to watch. Instead I watched the corny one about little bugs that eat the algae and convert it to oxygen, making Mars habitable except for the fact that those little bugs also eat people … and their robot tries to kill them. Oh well, I guess we’ll talk about this movie instead.

The story of this movie is serviceable. The part about Earth being overcrowded is nothing new but not entirely overdone. The obvious followup to the overpopulation is moving to a new planet which involves terraforming, so that the obvious next step in the process. Something needs to go wrong, so no surprises there. It’s a story you could probably figure out from just watching the trailer, but it’s not all bad. There’s some fun to be had in this movie. Some of the dialogue is drawn out too long, but some of it is charming. Some might say it’s very progressive of this movie to make the only female on board the commander, but then others may argue that the fact that she was the one left alone on the ship while the men did all the hard labor and all she could do is sit around, watch what was happening, and take care of the dishes and laundry was less progressive. The production on the movie is pretty solid too. I liked the little bouncy contraption they landed on Mars in. Granted it killed the old guy, but I think it looked wicked fun. The robot that they brought with them that then tries to kill them seemingly for no reason was well done graphically, but possibly not well thought out. I think it was some EMP thing that scrambled it’s robo-brain and made it decide to kill them. Probably should’ve put Asimov’s rules of robotics in that mamma jamma.

The performances were fine, but also nothing special. Carrie-Anne Moss got to take it easy on the movie, having no real physical labor to speak of here. All she really had to do was be concerned about the people on Mars, which she pulled off acceptably. I’ve found Val Kilmer compelling ever since he was Doc Holliday in Tombstone, so he can’t really do wrong by me. But he was fairly charming in this movie. Tom Sizemore was also pretty entertaining as basically the comic relief on the team. Simon Baker had to put out the most acting chops because he inadvertently killed Benjamin Bratt and then had to hide it from the rest of the team. There wasn’t much else going on here.

Not much to say about this movie. I wish it had been the other corny action movie set on Mars that I intended to watch, but this one would probably be of the same quality anyways. This movie was thoroughly mediocre. Not bad, not good, not particularly memorable, not particularly anything. You will live a comfortable life if you skip the movie, but you also probably won’t kill yourself if you have to sit through it. Those are your choices. Pick one! Or don’t. I don’t imagine anyone is going to be forcing you to watch a mediocre and forgettable movie from 11 years ago anyway. I’ll give this movie “We just disappointed 10 billion people” out of “We’re taking the first piss on Mars.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!