Despite the striking design work in the original 2000AD comics they never felt like something that would work as a live action film. The visual appearance of Judge Dredd and the look of the world were pure comic madness - it was full of things like mutant dinosaurs, weird fashion fads (Get Ugly!) and robot revolutions. They tried this once before with Sylvester Stallone after all, and despite some great production design on display little else made the transition to the big screen. Thankfully John Wagner's stony faced fascist is actually in a movie worth seeing this time around. More importantly it actually includes the character he created rather than a dumbed down interpretation full of awkward '90s genre tropes.
Karl Urban impresses in the title role despite having a bare minimum of dialogue. This is finally a character he can call his own after smaller parts in the likes of The Lord of the Rings sequels, The Bourne Supremacy or even Star Trek. Despite being good in all of these they were never his movies. This changes that - and he does it all without eyes. The iconic helmet goes on in almost total darkness moments after the story begins, and it never comes off again. It's pure angry face acting and growling dialogue, complete with the upturned Carlos Ezquerra style mouth. Dredd is played as a total jerk; a faceless figure of authority who sneers his way through the story, dishing out death and dry remarks. Which is perfect.
The villains opposing him are an equally violent bunch and the tone of the movie is certainly no buddy cop adventure. There's no scenery chewing to be found just thugs, junkies and lowlifes. Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) fits into this world perfectly as a scarred drug kingpin, making examples of her enemies and taking no nonsense from her underlings. The film itself is a grimy ultra-violent story full of exploding body parts and slow-motion blood. It's a nice mix of new and old that combines modern sensibilities with the kinds of hellish future visions we used to see from the likes of John Carpenter (the bleak atmosphere of something like Escape From New York is often present). The film itself is often lurid with harsh lighting and filthy hallways in almost every scene as the central pair of Judges become trapped inside a monolithic Mega City housing project.
This approach to the world building works well, and it's a refreshing antithesis to so many bigger more generic blockbusters. It may be cheap but it's certainly not cheerful. It's often colourful, but it's never easy on the eyes. This bleak kind of action adventure isn't for everyone of course, and saying so is perhaps quite an understatement. No other comic book adaptations are going to showcase incendiary bullets and exploding wounds like this beyond something less compelling like Punisher: War Zone. It's a shame the rating it achieved probably killed it at the box office, but a low marketing presence and the source material's lack of exposure internationally probably didn't help. The push for shooting in 3D on this kind of budget also didn't do it any favours, despite a few interesting sequences.
The actual plot a nice small scale story about Judge Dredd, the jaded cynic, and Judge Anderson, (Olivia Thirlby) the optimistic rookie. But don't worry there are no character arcs, cornball jokes or mutual friendships here. This isn't a cheesy buddy cop story despite the trappings. If anything Anderson is the protagonist who steps up to the challenge and walks away changed at the end. Dredd is always stoic, always perturbed, never changing. During Anderson's field training a simple murder investigation in a tower block turns out to be a lot more complicated than they first imagined. Things unfold one floor at a time but it essentially boils down to them being trapped Die Hard style, before they shoot everyone they meet to reach the big bad on the top level. Minor similarities to The Raid have been greatly exaggerated beyond the low budget location.
It feels a little video gamey at times, right down to the level progression accompanied by a bombastic synth score from Paul Leonard-Morgan. But the result is a pretty satisfying narrative structure. If there are any minor issues it's the lack of overtly futuristic elements, and the shoot in South Africa lends it too much real world atmosphere instead of a more heightened reality. A few added robots and hover wagons would have been nice even just as set dressing. It could all have been weirder and darker despite a lot of good world building and a sense that this is a true post nuclear war cityscape. That being said at least it's vastly superior to the 1995 attempt which failed to bring the material to the screen beyond a few outlandish moments.
In terms of keeping to the material there is a lack of direct satire but it has a few touches in Alex Garland's script. The gravestone landscape of the city is very nice, and the way the wide eyed trainee Anderson is being used by the Justice Department and actually becomes a cog in the system by the end is pretty compelling. She kicks a lot of ass along the way but there is a sense of innocence being lost. It manages to include few interesting ideas in what is otherwise a stripped down action movie. But RoboCop is still probably the most effective translation of the original comic tone even when the obvious cues it takes from the material are never acknowledged (2000AD fans should seek out the documentary Future Shock). It's a big shame that in the end this won't get a true sequel that might have included The Cursed Earth or Call Me Kenneth. Maybe it was always doomed to be a cult movie, but at least it's one that is worthy of attention.
4/5
