FILM / In the best of tastelessness

Hurting people is not a good thing,' pronounces Sylvester Stallone's rogue cop, nicknamed the Demolition Man (15) for his rough-house methods. Then, pausing as the full enormity of this statement dawns on him, he adds, 'Well . . . sometimes it is.' Like many action pictures these days, Demolition Man wants to have its beefcake and eat it.

America, anno 2032, is a kinder, gentler country: there is a ban on violence, profanity, body contact of any kind, guns and salt. In short, it's a dull futurist dystopia. Sly, a policeman from the old days (1996), has been sentenced to sub-zero 'rehabilitation' after a disagreement with bad guy Wesley Snipes. Now, 36 years later, these two fine specimens of late 20th-century manhood are defrosted and decanted into a strange and brave new world.

Snipes runs wild, and the - unarmed - police force, which hasn't dealt with his likes for 20 years, has no idea how to stop him. 'Lie down on the ground, or else]' commands a cop, faced with the killer, then is forced to radio, aggrieved, for further instructions: 'Maniac has responded with a scornful remark.'

This serene and rational society might scorn macho slugfests: as Snipes and Sly lock horns, a cop observes: 'This is how insecure heterosexual men used to bond.' But, when all is said and done, it's down to Stallone to save the world. This is a shamelessly right- wing, law-and-order film (you expected milksop liberalism from producer Joel Silver?).

Demolition Man is a deeply enjoyable movie. The direction, by Marco Brambilla, a first-timer, isn't more than adequate, but the film excels in other departments. The sci-fi world is packed with detail, wit and invention - 21st-century LA has been superbly envisaged by the designer of Blade Runner and the costumier of the Batman films.

The screenplay bristles with barbs sending up Neanderthal muscle men at sea in the New Age (Stallone displays an unexpected knack for self-mockery), but mostly at the expense of political correctness. A nice touch is Stallone's female sidekick (Sandra Bullock), a cop bored stiff with the 21st century and nostalgically fixated on the naughty Nineties (she has a habit of getting the vintage venacular just slightly wrong: 'Let's go blow this guy]' she declares at one point to a discomfited Stallone). One of the writers is the gifted

Daniel Waters, who worked on Heathers and Batman Returns.

The cast, which includes Nigel Hawthorne as Dr Cocteau, the future's softly-softly dictator, is better than the thin characters have any right to expect. Le sang d'un poete this isn't - it is trash, make no mistake about that. But it is trash out of the top drawer.

A deep conundrum hangs over Guilty as Sin (15), a Jagged Edge rip-off and one of those films where everyone's spotless, post-modern apartment resembles a room from the Museum of Modern Art. Even the courtroom, a symphony of chrome and black marble, ought to have a Jacuzzi in it. But the puzzle has nothing to do with the story: that is easy to suss out.

Ace attorney Rebecca DeMornay is hired by the dangerous, charming Don Johnson to defend him for uxoricide. But his guilt is patent: Johnson, in a lip-smacking, pantomime performance, is clearly a double-dyed cad (if he had a moustache, he would twirl it). And he is intent on implicating his attorney.

No, the central enigma of Guilty as Sin is the strange case of Sidney Lumet. Once Lumet directed deeply moral and serious dramas like the classic 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and The Verdict. But his last film, Close to Eden, in which Melanie Griffith played an undercover cop in New York's Hassidic community, was a turkey, and now the new film is so bad it could almost be an intentional spoof.

In Claude Miller's L'Accompagnatrice (PG) Romaine Bohringer is a pianist who enters the employ of Elena Safanova's elegant, flighty diva. Paris is in the grip of the German occupation and she is agape at the household's luxury and waste, but it turns out that the husband (Richard Bohringer, Romaine's father) is a businessman playing the black market. And his wife is having an affair.

L'Accompagnatrice starts impressively: Miller scores some telling points, about the menage's many layers of hypocrisy and self-deception, and the mismatch between the beautiful German lieder which Safanova sings, and the barbarities she sees around her. But it is a sorry sight to watch a film fall apart before your eyes, and you can pinpoint the moment at which this one does so exactly: when the family escapes to London, and the multiple ironies dissolve into a banal tale of marital infidelity.

(Photograph omitted)