Actor, mixed martial artist, businessman, and income-tax evader Wesley Snipes of White Men Can't Jump (co-starring with now-anarchist Woody Harrelson) and Blade fame, was well known in the 1990s. He starred in New Jack City, Wildcats, Major League, King of New York, Rising Sun, U.S. Marshals, and the Expendables 3, among others, and in an episode of Miami Vice in the '80s and in the Michael Jackson music video "Bad."
Though he will always be associated with his victimless crimes and his titular role in the Blade trilogy, he is immortalized as the villain in a stark, but subtle, libertarian science fiction film, Demolition Man (1993).
Set in a futuristic dystopia, reminiscent to the Aldous Huxley 1931 novel Brave New World, where two opposing men (Wesley's criminal mastermind and Sylvester Stallone's scorched-earth cop) are cryogenically frozen in 1996 and thawed out in the San Angeles world of 2032 to fight again. (Side note: pseudo-libertarians Jesse Ventura and Denis Leary have small roles)
This sci-fi action progresses as detective John Spartan is awaken to take down his arch-enemy Simon Phoenix, just to see a world where everyone is monitored, vice is forced out, and collective complacency is compulsory. During his crime spree of murder and havoc, Phoenix has intrusive thoughts of killing a man named Edgar Friendly (Leary).
Spartan leads a wild-goose chase where people are implanted with tracking chips, vulgar language is fined, guns are outlawed, people are mindless, and "three seashells" replace toilet paper. Even meat is banned - New York City on big-government steroids.
In one scene where the futurist cops, who worship the mastermind of the big-government plan, are brainstorming what Phoenix will do next, Spartan successfully predicts he will create a black market. When guns are banned, the criminals will be armed to the teeth with guns.
Spartan said it best when he said, "send a maniac to catch a maniac."
In true Leary-style diatribe Edgard Friendly sums up the libertarian position of vice very well, even in the face of government intimidation (in the form of the Cocteau administration). It should be noted, on top of using guns and weapons to scavenge for food from a government who bans other means, the "enemies of the state" have created an agorist society in the sewers.
"See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. 'Cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, 'Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?' I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter, and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay, pal? I've seen the future, you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sittin' around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing 'I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener.' You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death."
Pretty much Patrick Henry meets Walter Block.
Does Spartan get his man? Does Phoenix kill the agorist? Only one way to find out. What's your boggle?
