In 1995 Sylvester Stallone starred in an adaptation of the classic 2000AD comic strip Judge Dredd, an adaptation that was less than successful, but then in 2012 Hollywood decided to give the famed masked Judge a chance of parole with a new movie but this time they weren't going to take as big of a risk, with a tiny budget and condensed story could Dredd finally make the successful transition to film.
The premise of the movie is very basic, Dredd and a trainee Judge get locked in tower block and they have to fight their way to the top to take down the person in contol of the situation. The first thing to take note of in the film is the spot on casting including Karl Urban (Star Trek) as the law enforcer Dredd and Lena Heady as the criminal mastermind MaMa, both actors deliver such compelling performances that you forget how basic the story is and just enjoy the ride. The characterization of Dredd is incredibly faithful to the comics and fixes one of biggest complaints of the Stallone movie, Dredd never takes his helmet off.
The joy of this movie is that not only does the movie fix some of the issues that plagued the original but also drops in a few nods to the original including the iconic line `I am the law`.
While the film has a huge amount of positive points there are a couple of downfalls, the biggest of which isn't actually a flaw of the film but rather the lacklustre performance at the box office, this was a real shame because not only does this mean that many people missed out on this well crafted, original action film but, and this may be the biggest shame, due to it's rather small box office takings the likelihood of us getting a sequel is very slim despite Karl Urban's very vocal interest at making a sequel, hopefully with it's timely discovery on DVD and Blu-Ray the sales might show that we want another Dredd movie and potentially a franchise but only time will tell.
Verdict: A solid, well crafted action film that stands up against repeated viewing. 8/10
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