Movie with wesley snipes and sylvester stallone

In October 1993, an action comedy titled “Demolition Man” was released. Set in the then-hard-to-imagine future of 2032, it starred Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes and launched the career of the previously unknown Sandra Bullock. I loved the film (Bullock in particular) and gave it the highest rating, and then proceeded not to think of it for a full 26½ years.

But now, with the new coronavirus pandemic, there have been comments on social media about the ways in which “Demolition Man” actually predicted our future. So, I watched it again. (It’s available to stream on Hulu.)

The movie doesn’t get everything right, but it gets just enough right to be interesting.

First, the big things it gets wrong: (1) Crime did not go up in the 1990s. It went way down; (2) There was no massive Southern California earthquake in 2010; and (3) Toilet paper is still in use. In fact, it’s in demand. (In the world of “Demolition Man,” that hygienic function is handled through a mysterious process involving three shells.)

Other predictions come close enough. “Demolition Man,” made during the height of the AIDS crisis, anticipated two other sexually transmitted epidemics (fictional STDs called NRS and UBT in the film) in the intervening 39 years. Those didn’t happen – not yet – but in the film’s future world, “physical contact greetings” have been abolished. Those greetings are on hold now, and it’s just possible that, by the time this pandemic is over, the social custom of shaking hands may be suspended indefinitely.

At one point in the film, someone has a board meeting in which all the participants but one are seen on a series of small screens. That’s close to imagining videoconferencing technology such as Zoom. There’s also mention of the fact that everyone has been “lojacked” — that is, that they’ve had a tracking device installed. We have cell phones that accomplish pretty much the same thing.

There are TV phones everywhere. In the 20th century, everyone anticipated them, but no one quite grasped that most of the time people would just as soon not see each other, or allow themselves to be seen. And so the car phone here has a video screen.

There’s a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s having been president. That never happened, but considering that he became governor of California 10 years after this film’s release, that’s uncannily close. There’s also a reference to Jackie Chan, years before he became well known in the United States.

But by far, the most fascinating thing in “Demolition Man” is the way it anticipates the bifurcation of American culture. On the surface, it shows a middle and upper class living in a placid, antiseptic world in which no one is able to say anything offensive, and in which everything unhealthy has been made illegal. And then, under the ground, there exists a thuggish and resentful underclass that eats rats and revels in shocking the upper class.

Or to put it another way, “Demolition Man” anticipates a future in which one half the population is humorless, delicate and too politically correct to breathe, and in which the other half is perpetually enraged and glorying in its own pristine ignorance. No, this is not quite where America is now, but face it, we’re closer to that now than we were in 1993. Back then, this aspect of “Demolition Man” just seemed funny. Now it’s satire. At one point, Stallone advises the two factions to meet somewhere in the middle. It was an offhand remark that now sounds like wisdom.

Bottom line, this is a movie worth seeing now, and its prescience aside, it’s as funny as it ever was. As a police officer who loves the 20th century, Bullock is a total delight, as she tries to speak 20th century slang and keeps getting it wrong. (“Let’s go blow this guy,” she says, when she means “Let’s go blow this guy away.” Or this one: “There’s a new shepherd in town,” she says, when she means to say “sheriff.”) Without a doubt, the easiest prediction to make in 1993 was that Sandra Bullock was going to be a star.

• Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle's film critic. Email: Twitter: @MickLaSalle