By Geno McGahee
In 1995, Sylvester Stallone appeared in a film called “JUDGE DREDD”, and it was about as bad as it gets. It was even bad by Stallone standards. It was so bad that they included Rob Schneider in a major role. Stallone and Schneider should have prompted the investors to pull out quickly, but they went ahead with it and it got a big screen release and it bombed. It took 17 years for Hollywood to bring back this character. They hoped we forgot. I did not. I went in with very low expectations, but to my surprise, it was quite good.
We begin in the future, where everything is destroyed and everyone is poor. It may be closer to the present then the distant future. Dredd (Karl Urban), a “Judge” that is in the role of police officer, judge, and execution. He is always mad and has that scowl on his face. He is nearly robotic in the role but he’s effective.
Dredd is teamed up with a rookie mutant (again with the mutants), Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). Anderson has incredible psychic abilities, which makes her a big asset to the force, but Dredd is upset about it. I think he is. It’s hard to tell because he has absolutely no emotion and may not even dig chicks. Anderson is hot and Dredd has that reputation that he’s a big deal. He could have easily flirted a little and maybe got some, but he seems to get off on killing bad guys more than anything else.
The new team investigates three skinned bodies that were launched from the top of a building and it leads to Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), a former prostitute turned drug lord. She locks down the building and calls hunting season on the two judges. Dredd and Anderson are now trying to survive and a boatload of bad guys hunt them down, but the two prove to be hard to kill and mow them all down, video game style. A lot of this looks like a video game and a lot of the CGI kills are distracting, but it’s still entertaining.
Bad guys, crooked cops and more prove to be big obstacles, but the judges keep going and keep killing. It almost becomes absurd as you get into the final act of the film, but it was so much fun that I have a hard time saying anything negative about it. DREDD proved to be a good film. The action was so over the top and plentiful that it satisfied the action fan’s need for violence and it had redeemed the name of DREDD after Stallone dropped the ball so many years ago. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 8/10
Very fun and bloody, which makes it all the more entertaining and I can only wonder what they will do with the next installments of this series, if they can get there. Good review Geno.
Yes, it was great fun!!!