This film has been judged (badly) (Judge Dredd (DVD))

Member Name: mcrouch

Product:	Judge Dredd (DVD)
Date:	30/06/01 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No need for prior knowledge, straight-forward comic strip action

Disadvantages: plot falls apart later on, don't expect to see the 2000AD Judge Dredd

I love comic art and as such have seen a lot of the Judge Dredd strip over the years. I have also seen this movie several times. Now Judge Dredd fan + movie normally = hate movie but I actually quite like it.

It isn't a great film, it missed a lot of opportunities and some of the characters weren't handly that well. What with the plot falling apart in the second half, this film didn't have an awful lot going for it. Even so, it's still a pretty good action yarn.

Stallone was a fairly obvious choice for the role and to his credit he carried the role off fairly well. Apart from the repititious use of "I knew you were going to say that", he was commendable, particularly in the earlier scenes where he zooms in on his Lawmaster bike and proclaims to the other judges present that he is the back-up. He then goes in single-handed and brings a mighty block war to a devastating conclusion. All in all so far, very Judge Dredd.

A number of characters were drawn in from the series history but were here largely in name only. Personally that doesn't bother me. This is a movie, not a comic. Comic rules do not apply. Besides, 2000AD has had over twenty four years to acclimatise readers to Dredd's world, this movie had only the best part of two hours.

The worst crime (excuse the pun) was the loss of a satirical element, the streak of black humour that runs through the comic strip. I don't buy the argument that this is because American's don't understand it. They've demonstrated a very good grasp of it in a number of tv shows and movies, including my favourite show, Frasier. I think that the reason it is absent was purely a case of focussing on this being an action film. And that in part was its downfall. All of the plot elements, the framing of Dredd for murder, the secret cloning project and so on, all elements drawn from the comics history, were nicely built up during the first hal
f of the film. The Angel gang were largely superfluous to the plot but it was nice to see them anyway. Then in the second half, it just seemed to devolve into a lengthy chase sequence, a lot of shooting and explosions, before culminating in that Godawful closing scene with Hershey ("I knew you were going to say that").

So there you go. My opinion, for what it's worth, is forget the comic, put away any preconceived notions you might have about the film, and just enjoy it on it's own terms. If you haven't seen it before, it makes a diverting if unchallenging bit of hokey entertainment for an evening. If you have seen it before, try the advice above - you might just find it wasn't as bad as it seemed.

This court is closed.

Summary: