Dredd

Passing Judgement on a modern classic 

Some people like to claim that 2016's Deadpool was the first R/18 rated comic book movie ever made. These people are absolute buffoons who know nothing about anything and should be placed into protective custody to stop them tripping over their own shoelaces. To the best of my knowledge, the first was 1990's Darkman. But people don't remember that one as much as Blade, or perhaps even Spawn. So many comic book characters are perfect for dark and violent adaptation, mostly because all good comic book characters aren't afraid to shoot people in the face. But my favourite, and therefor the best one, is Dredd.

Judge Dredd is the brain child of John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra and Pat Mills and first appeared in issue two of 2000 A.D, a brilliant British comic anthology that you should absolutely pick up if you can find it. Judge Dredd is a police officer from 122 years in the future, after the world was near totally destroyed in a nuclear war. In Mega City One, a horrifying urban sprawl that takes up most of the East coast of America, Street Judges like Dredd fight crime quickly and brutally, arresting, judging and sentencing then and there. And the sentence is usually a bullet to the brain. And the bullet may also set you on fire, explode or fly straight through you and the person behind you before exploding into White phosphorus. Its brutal, gorey, darkly satirical and absolutely fantastic.

After an abysmal outing with Sylvester Stallone in 1995, the franchise sat dormant, at least on the film front, for well over a decade until Pete Travis directed this master piece in 2012. Starring Karl Urban, himself a big fan of the character, as Dredd. In short, he knocks out into the stratosphere. The helmet never comes off (which is how it should be!) and he is still able to communicate so much with body language and various forms of sneering. The story follows Dredd taking a rookie Judge, Anderson, out on assessment. Anderson is also a psychic, which seems to suprise everybody even though PSI-Judges are a well established department in the comics, but thats probably a lot to dump on people just being introduced to the world. Anyway, after responding to a triple homicide in the Peach Trees Tower Block, Dredd and Anderson become trapped in a 200 storey labyrinth under the control of gang leader Ma-Ma, played to perfecting by Lena Headey.

It would be easy to call this a dystopic and satirical version of The Raid, but that would be selling this movie short. It stands not only as a great adaptation, but also as a perfectly paced and executed action movie in its own right. This is one of those movies where not only did the people on screen give their all, but so did everyone behind the camera. That fact that this film didn't break even at the box-office is a crying shame. Not many movies could make you root for a man who's version of due process is to quickly rattle off a list of supposed crimes before blowing peoples brains out and communicates mainly in threats and sneering in a world where police brutality is standard operating procedure. But, lo and behold, they did.