Sci Fi September # 11 – Judge Dredd
In the far future, the police have been replaced by the Judges who could arrest, judge, and sentence criminals. The best Judge is Dredd, but is he without fault?
This is a movie I wanted to see made since I started reading the comic 2000AD. Stallone plays Dredd with style and power but unlike the comic where no one ever sees Judge Dredd‘s face, you get to see Stallones mug for most of the movie. Armand Assante is Rico, the Judge that went bad, and you can see the similarity between the two leads.
The movie is very comic book like and does stay fairly true to the comic strip but it doesn’t take itself seriously enough for the die hard fans of Dredd. To be true to the comic you would need a little more craziness in the world. Its cool that there is an ABC warrior in the movie but the movie is just too Hollywood to be good enough for me.
Its was pretty cool to have the Angel family in the movie as they were always some good characters in the comics but they get wiped out way too quickly. In a perfect world, Judge Dredd would have been made right, been a lot darker and successful, and there would have been a sequel or two to mine the huge archive of Dredd stories.
Stallone plays Dredd pretty well but as I say previously, he needed to be wearing his helmet at all times, which is something that most actors wouldn’t want to do. I hope that with the current run of comic inspired movies that someone will have the courage to remake Judge Dredd true to the comics and make a movie that fans of Dredd will be proud of.
Tags: Angel, Armand Assante, Comic book, Film, Hollywood, Judge Dredd, Karl Urban, Sylvester Stallone
