Near Miss

Let's not bandy words.
Casting a star of Stallone's magnitude in a film where the main character is famous, (amongst other things), for never showing his face, was a poor move. He does actually suit the role, but it was inevitable that he would eventually have to take off the helmet.
The first twenty minutes or so are fine. Dredd is a commanding presence behind his visor, and Diane Lane brings the humanity to the screen that Dredd obviously lacks.
The bikes, uniforms, guns and locale look pretty much perfect. Alot of time and effort was obviously spent making them faithful but functional.
A couple of steps are taken to portraying the facist, horribly unfair world that Dredd enforces. We begin to mix our respect for him with dislike, which is as it should be. Right there, you could be fooled into thinking they were going to pull it off.
Then all of that is thrown away as Dredd is whisked through a trial and the film becomes just another random action flick.
Bike chase, comedy sidekick, grunting one liners and before you know it, disbelief is no longer suspended, and you forget you are supposed to be watching Dredd. Instead, you are suddenly watching a bizarre cross between Demolition Man and Deuce Bigalow.

Add to this, the unexplainable way they crammed in as many comic book character cameos as they could, without much due cause. If the intention was to give it a Dredd feel, then why did they mess with them so much? Hammerstein is a robotic hitman, the Angel gang are superb, but just seem to 'show up' with the intention of starting an action sequence, and the only thing Fergie has in common with his origins is the name.
I was half expecting to see Rogue Trooper waiting tables or Johnny Alpha hiding in the background.

It's not all bad. Armand Assante takes the villain role and seems to have fun with it, potraying a volatile temper mixed with homocidal tendancies. That little insane glint in his eye hits the spot quite nicely.
However, even his turn, and the likes of Jurgen Prochnow and Max Von Sydow cannot make this film what it should have been.

The end result is a crude utilisation of very good material to create an average action movie. Dredd has had many good stories in the past, all ripe for screen time, yet none of them were used here. Or, more accurately, five or six of them were haphazardly mashed together for no justifiable reason.

Brave attempt, but chances are, this was not the Dredd you were looking for.

Excellent adaptation of the British comic book!

If you review this as "another Stallone movie", you're missing the point entirely. This is an over-the-top action movie based on an over-the-top COMIC BOOK. Even if it wasn't based on a comic, it would still be a decent sci-fi epic. However, this film was RIPPED APART when it was released, which bafled me. It is very true to the comic source (almost spot-on at times), features some wicked cool visuals and earned a nice hard R rating. I left the theater loving this film, but saw reviews that destroyed it. Whatever. A great cast, twisted sense of humor and wonderful set and costume designs. I know that director Danny Cannon's carreer was all but over after this film and that's a shame. He was a Brit who loved Dredd as a kid and I remember his excitement over getting to direct "His dream project". Stallone later attacked Cannon in interviews when defending Dredd. Pathetic. One of Stallone's best as well as one of the better films released in the 90's...

Dreddful Review

One of my guilty pleasures is to review science fiction movies over and over again...Maybe I'm hoping the movie will get better with time. Unfortunately "Judge Dredd" does not! I'm a science fiction fan that can be suckered by mediocre CGI , an action hero star, a comic relief, and a beautiful love interest but please don't mess with the storyline. Maybe thiis is the case for "Future Shock" and too much information was being given out but all in all science fiction deals with the person's humanity and "Dredd" forces it down our throats too fast and too sugary....In fact , I feel two stars is gviing this movie too much!