JUDGED AND FOUND LACKING (Judge Dredd (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Judge Dredd (DVD)
Date:	25/10/01 (39 review reads)
Rating:

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Ok wampy...be nice, there must be something nice to say about this movie...

Well...it looks nice. The futuristic city of Megacity is all very Blade Runner meets Total Recall in their design. Dark streets with bright neon lights everywhere and flying vehicles...you know the kind of thing - the typical view of the future. The problem is that, were Judge Dredd the first movie to come up with this view of the future then it might warrant some praise, but the problem is that it isn't. In fact, its a long way down the list and its it somewhat boring. Boring too is the view of the future as being a violent place where society has crumbled and lawlessness reigns. This concept is getting tired to say the least...

Judge Dredd is..."unoriginal", that is the best which can be said for it. It borrows liberaly from an enormous number of other futuristic action movies such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Mad Max, and so on - there are even elements of the Wes Craven exploitation flick The Hills Have Eyes...basically though its a movie which has no new ideas of its own. Now this wouldn't be a problem if the story etc. was good and the movie entertaining. The problem is that is isn't. At all. Judge Dredd puts you in the futuristic city of Megacity where lawlessness reigns and rival blocks shoot each other up for the aparrent hell of it. Around these streets patrol the genetically enhanced law enforcement officers know as the 'judges', who are their own law often executing law breakers on the spot for their crimes. Stallone plays Judge Dredd who becomes framed for a murder by his gentic clone played by Armand Assenti. He finds himself on the receiving end of the law's wrath and must kick some butt on the streets to find his clone and bring him to justice.

This is the 'plot' which is basically an excuse for some campy dialogue and less than impressive action scenes. If it were not for the presence of Sylvester Stall
one then this movie would have bombed in my eyes. Fortunately, he is smart enough to carry off a role such as this and has enough decent wisecracks to pull the movie through. The problem I have though is that I could never work out whether this movie is meant to be a parody, a comedy, a campy action flick...or something else. What it certainly isn't is a representation of the 2000AD comic books - purists will hate it. It is also not well written, well scripted, well acted or well...it isn't very good at all.

You might like to count the number of times someone sneaks up behind someone else in the movie...that is what Judge Dredd uses for action and suspense. You might ask yourself why the beginning looks like Star Wars, has the voice of James Earl Jones(Darth Vadar) narrating the scrolling text, and why we are not given the intellect to be able to read this ourselves without him. Perhaps this movie was meant to appeal to a bunch of illiterate morons and thats why, its certainly difficult to see it having much appeal to anyone else. You might ask why you expected a movie called 'Judge Dredd' would be any good anyway, then you can think of Batman, Darkman, Blade and some of the other comic book adaptations which have turned out to be rather good movies and see that it did in fact have much potential. Stallone does his best to raise it to a better level but he doesn't have much chance when everything else about the movie is this bad.

Definitely one to miss, or at least to wait for a terrestrial television release, if it hasn't made one already.

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