“I am the Law!”

For this month, I want to focus on this cool little movie from 1995 called, Judge Dredd. Maybe you’ve heard of it? The character of Judge Dredd can be traced back to 1977 in first appearance in issue number 2 of 2000 AD, a British comic anthology strip. His actual creation makes for an interesting story of deceit, backstabbing, cons, and whatnot… But that’s for another time… For now, I want to talk about the movie that starred Sylvester Stallone and Armand Assante. This was one of those movies where, at the time of it’s release, I lacked much appreciation. You see, I knew that Dredd was a comic book character and that he had a cool looking helmet, but that was about it. When I saw the movie in theaters, I was mostly just excited to see a new Stallone movie, plus I thought his gun was really cool. But is that enough reason for this to be one of my favorite adaptions? Surely not. But I’ll certainly give it a shot as to why it is.

You see, I love violent media. I love to see gunshots, explosions, high speed chases, one liners, and “battle damage” by the end of the movie. This movie had it all, and then some. It took all these great things then added other cool stuff like robots, clones, conspiracies, Rob Schneider (I think he’s funny), a narration from James Earl Jones, and the future… All these things put together makes for an awesome concoction. But I can’t help but to feel that even with all that, this film goes under appreciated. The movie kinda/sorta followed a few storylines from the comic… I suppose one could say the movie was an amalgam of a few early storylines, most prominent of which was the 2nd storyline that dealt with Judge Dredd’s criminal brother, Rico (as played by Armand Assante… That’s a fun name to say.). Anyway, the premise of the film begins with the idea that in the future (2139), everyone lives in a few Mega Cities across the world, seeing as most of the world is now a barren desert filled bandits and mutants. In the Mega Cities, there is a police force known as Judges, that have the authority to arrest, trial, and even execute on site. As it was, Judge Dredd happened to have a bit of a reputation as the worst Judge to come across if you were a criminal. Very by the book and very unforgiving, it was these things that made him the best of the best. And so the movie plays out like that until Rico breaks out of prison and goes on a killing spree while under the guise of being a Judge. Eventually, Dredd is framed for Rico’s crimes and is sent off to prison, leaving a few loyal Judges left to find out what is really going on, as well as stopping the crazed Rico from going through with his sinister plans. How is that not cool?

Well, some Dredd fans out there didn’t think it was cool at all, despite the filmmakers putting in a ton of effort to make the comic world appear as it did in the pages of 2000 AD. You see, even though the characters and the sets were correct and translated well for the most part, there were some gripes here and there about the finer points of the comic not making the translation. The biggest of which was that Dredd was always taking his helmet off. You see, in the comic, he rarely ever takes his helmet off, and when he does, his face is typically obscured. But it’s like, if he never took his helmet off in the movie, you’d never know it was Stallone under there… Well, unless you listened to the guy, but even then, one could argue that it would’ve just been a voice over. Another big thing was that the love interest for Dredd was another Judge, by the name of Hershey (played by Diane Lane). That was a no-no in the comics. Judges were forbidden have any sort of romance, be it with another Judge or anyone else. But hey, I understand the change. It’s hard to get a big budget ($85 million) movie made without the aspect of love in the film. But you know what? This was a very cool action movie. So what if it wasn’t accurate? In 1995, I needed to know who the law was, and this movie let me know who it was. It was Judge Dredd.

Now, I realize that I didn’t really go into the animatronics, effects work, set design, and whatnot… And that’s a shame on my part, because the film has a lot of great technical things about it. So, if you’ve never seen the movie before, use this as an opportunity to see the great work that a lot of people put into this movie. And please, don’t let the pronunciation of the word, “Law”, keep you from enjoying the movie. There was a lot of potential in this movie, some of which was actually met. Give it a chance, and then look forward to the new Judge Dredd film that is in the process of being made. Granted, its main writer absolutely hated the film I’m writing about, but at least he has the passion. I look forward to the movie he puts out, but even then, the movie that I wrote about this day, will always be one of my favorites. See ya next time!

-Fleet

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