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Watch Dredd with a subscription on Peacock, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

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Fueled by bombastic violence and impressive special effects, rooted in self-satire and deadpan humor, Dredd 3D does a remarkable job of capturing its source material's gritty spirit.

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Pete Travis

Judge Dredd

Olivia Thirlby

Cassandra Anderson

Lena Headey

Wood Harris

Langley Kirkwood

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Common sense media reviewers.

Extreme violence, drugs in intense comic book tale.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Brutality and cruelty prevail in this dystopian fu

Judge Dredd's brand of heroism includes killing, a

The female lead, Anderson, is brave and both menta

Extreme and nonstop violence, gore, and peril. Gal

A man imagines a woman performing oral sex on him,

Language is constant and contains many uses of "f-

The main villain manufactures and sells a (fictiti

Positive Messages

Brutality and cruelty prevail in this dystopian future. The ways that criminal behavior is dealt with in this world may raise questions about how far the power of the law should extend, and the movie highlights the importance of having a good mentor.

Positive Role Models

Judge Dredd's brand of heroism includes killing, and he often gets fixated on chasing criminals instead of protecting innocent civilians. But his apprentice judge, Anderson, is a counterpoint to the self-centered Dredd, showing empathy. Both are brave and work together to fight crime.

Diverse Representations

The female lead, Anderson, is brave and both mentally and physically strong, as she fights crime in a dangerous environment. She falls into slight gender clich és of having initially been mentored by a man and being more compassionate and intuitive than he is. Main villain Ma-Ma is a female drug lord with a complex personality and backstory. The rest of the main cast is White, with Black characters in supporting roles. Chief Judge, played by Black Welsh actor Rakie Ayola, is the leader of the legal system but has very little screen time. Black American actor Wood Harris plays Kay, an important member of Ma-ma's crime ring.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Extreme and nonstop violence, gore, and peril. Gallons of blood spilled, hundreds of casualties, and thousands of bullets fired (some in slow motion, such as when a character's head is blown off). People are smashed by cars, burned alive, and thrown from great heights, splattering on the ground. Others are beaten, pummeled, and bloodied. Characters violently break someone's neck and gouge eyes. In a few extremely quick flashbacks, people are skinned alive while screaming. Two teens pick up guns to try to kill Dredd; he stuns them first. A scene suggests that a woman bites off a man's genitals: She kneels down in front of him, and the scene then cuts to him screaming and her with a bloody mouth.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man imagines a woman performing oral sex on him, but the entire thing is brief; nothing sensitive is visible. A naked woman whose breasts are visible also appears in his thoughts. The lead villain is said to have once been a "hooker" and a "prostitute."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language is constant and contains many uses of "f--k," as well as "s--t," "motherf----r," "ass," "goddamn," and "bitch."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The main villain manufactures and sells a (fictitious) illegal street drug called "Slo-Mo," which slows down the user's experiences. Slowed-down "drug trip" scenes are shown throughout the movie. Some teens are seen using the drug. No real-life drugs or alcohol are shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Dredd is based on the futuristic comic book hero Judge Dredd, who was also the subject of a 1995 Sylvester Stallone movie . Expect to see extreme sci-fi/fantasy violence, with thousands of bullets fired, gallons of blood spilled, and hundreds of casualties, including victims being splattered and burned, their necks broken and eyes gouged. Language includes many uses of "f--k," as well as "s--t," "motherf----r," "ass," "goddamn," and "bitch." A character briefly imagines oral sex being performed on him (bare breasts seen). The entire plot is about the manufacture and distribution of a fictitious illegal street drug called "Slo-Mo." Viewers see drug trips and teens trying it. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (8)
Kids say (28)

Based on 8 parent reviews

I am the only one who noticed?

Excellent movie, but definitely not for kids, what's the story.

In the future, Judge DREDD ( Karl Urban ) works as law enforcer in Mega-City One; his job has been simplified, allowing him to kill anyone who's actually guilty. He's assigned to test out a new rookie judge, Anderson ( Olivia Thirlby ), to see whether she has what it takes. On their first day, they enter a 200-story high rise to investigate a triple homicide. They find a possible killer ( Wood Harris ) and decide to take him in for questioning. But the evil drug queen called "Ma-Ma" ( Lena Headey ) who runs the entire building shuts it down, preventing any escape, and then orders the occupants to kill the two judges. Will our heroes survive long enough to complete their mission?

Is It Any Good?

No subplots, romances, or comic sidekicks get in the way of the pure action in this adrenaline-filled movie. Both Dredd and the earlier The Raid: Redemption are set in a high rise with the bad guy at the top, where every floor is more dangerous than the one before it. Fortunately, the two movies are different enough—and enjoyable enough—that they can exist side by side. Based on the popular comic book, Dredd is extremely violent but minimalist at the same time. Even Urban, as Dredd, speaks only when necessary and only in an emotionless murmur.

Director Pete Travis uses space well and also incorporates awesome production design, such as a skateboard ramp that hangs off the side of the building several hundred feet up. The "Slo-Mo" drug trip sequences in particular are quite dazzling. Thankfully, even these flashier elements are all employed solely for the purpose of underlining and enhancing the action. Overall, Dredd isn't as rich or as deep as The Dark Knight Rises or The Avengers , but it's good, solid comic book fun.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Dredd 's extreme violence , gore, and blood. How necessary is it to the story? How does it compare to what you might see in a horror movie? Does violence add to your overall enjoyment of the film? Why, or why not?

How do the actions of law enforcement characters compare to those of the villains? What is the movie saying about the powers of the law? Do you agree or disagree with the film's message?

As a superhero and/or comic book hero, is Judge Dredd a role model ? How does he compare to other comic book heroes you've seen (Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, etc.)?

What does Anderson learn over the course of the movie? Is she a positive role model ? If so, what character traits make her admirable?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 21, 2012
On DVD or streaming : January 8, 2013
Cast : Karl Urban , Lena Headey , Olivia Thirlby
Director : Pete Travis
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Bisexual actors
Studio : Lionsgate
Genre : Action/Adventure
Run time : 95 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : strong bloody violence, language, drug use and some sexual content
Last updated : May 4, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Dredd – review

A common mistake in screen adaptations – and one not confined to comic-books – is to shave off all the interesting edges and end up with a product that bears little relationship to the name being traded off. This is not a problem that affects this movie. The essence of Dredd is that he is almost an anti-character – he doesn't change or learn – and Urban nails it in an ego-free performance with half his head obscured by a helmet. Taking a slightly less futuristic take than the 2000AD comic source, we're launched into a gritty and incredibly violent Mega City as Dredd and rookie Judge Anderson fight their way through a kilometre-high tower block assailed by perps high on Slo-Mo, a narcotic whose main effect is to make gunfights look really cool. In a world of compromised adaptations, Dredd is something of a triumph.

Science fiction and fantasy films
Action and adventure films

Comments (…)

Writer/Director Alex Garland, Ranked

More like this

Did you know

Trivia Karl Urban insisted on riding the Lawmaster motorcycle himself.
Goofs When Dredd throws Kay across the room, he rolls over a desk and his arms come apart even though he is handcuffed.

Anderson : [reads Kay's mind] Sir, he's thinking about going for your gun.

Judge Dredd : Yeah.

Anderson : [reads it again] He just changed his mind.

Connections Edited into 5 Second Movies: Dredd 3D (2014)
Soundtracks Jubilee (Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around) Written by Bobby Womack , Harold Payne , Damon Albarn and Richard Russell Published by ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI), Chrysalis Music Ltd, Copyright Control Performed by Bobby Womack Licensed courtesy of XL Recordings Ltd. By arrangement with Beggars Group Media Ltd. (p) 2012 XL Recordings Ltd.

User reviews 891

danceontheceiling
Sep 7, 2012
In Kay's imagined rape scene of Anderson was a body double used for Olivia Thirlby?
What is Dredd about?
Is this a remake of 'Judge Dredd'?
September 21, 2012 (United States)
United Kingdom
South Africa
Official Facebook
Hội Thẩm Phán
Johannesburg, South Africa
Peach Trees
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$50,000,000 (estimated)
$13,414,714
Sep 23, 2012
$41,037,742

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes
Dolby Digital
Dolby Atmos

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Geoff Berkshire

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Grim, gritty and ultra-violent, “ Dredd ” reinstates the somber brutality missing from the U.K. comicbook icon’s previous screen outing, the disappointing 1995 Sylvester Stallone starrer “Judge Dredd.” A reboot as drastic as Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” this hard-R, sci-fi actioner from director Pete Travis and screenwriter Alex Garland should find an appreciative audience among serious-minded fanboys and gorehounds, while the pic’s more extreme elements will likely limit its potential of crossing over to the superhero mainstream when Lionsgate releases it domestically Sept. 21.

At a time when most comicbook adaptations try to be all things to all people, “Dredd” makes the radical choice of playing to the base. Dredd-heads disappointed by the creative liberties and concessions to conventionality made by the Stallone version will find little reason to quibble with the determined and unapologetic approach to the one-man judge, jury and executioner here. There’s no comic-relief sidekick, no love interest, no movie-star pandering. In a direct nod to the source, this Dredd never even removes his face-obscuring helmet, remaining a stoic and mysterious figure throughout.

Popular on Variety

The action unfolds on a futuristic Earth ravaged by wars and divided into overcrowded urban centers known as Mega-Cities, patrolled by Judges, members of an all-powerful police force equipped with the latest technology and bestowed with the responsibility of rendering life-or-death verdicts at the scene of a crime. The irreproachable Judge Dredd ( Karl Urban ), who safeguards Mega-City One, is asked to evaluate rookie Cassandra Anderson ( Olivia Thirlby ), an Academy underachiever who nevertheless possesses extraordinary psychic abilities: She can read minds, a rather invaluable trick for solving crimes.

When Dredd and Cassandra respond to a triple-homicide call in a high-rise, they find themselves battling ruthless drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), a former prostitute who now rules with an iron fist over the 200-story vertical slum. Ma-Ma has evaded capture while supplying Mega-City One with a potent narcotic called Slo-Mo, which allows users to experience reality at a fraction of its normal speed — but she’s never faced Judge Dredd.

The film’s unforgiving version of Dredd is something of a cross between Christian Bale’s Batman and Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. He’s a badass of few words and a gravelly voice. While Urban isn’t permitted to reveal much humanity behind the man (we never even get a peek at Dredd’s eyes beneath his uniform helmet, let alone his soul), he does a fine job embodying the more mythic qualities of Dredd as an upright law enforcer no lowlife would want to confront.

That leaves Thirlby to shoulder the film’s emotional core, and the physically unassuming actress proves up to the challenge of a meaty role. Cassandra is as committed to taking down criminals as Dredd, but she also harbors a deep reserve of empathy that stems from being able to see into other people’s minds. One of the film’s true thrills comes in watching Thirlby effortlessly balance the conflict between a Judge’s merciless duties and a psychic’s compassionate understanding.

Of course, “Dredd” also serves up thrills far less nuanced than its heroine’s inner struggles. Relentless carnage bombards the viewer from all sides, even more so in impressively utilized 3D. Heads are smashed, bullets rip through body parts and one larynx is memorably destroyed, accompanied by the throbbing sounds of Paul Leonard-Morgan’s bass-heavy original score. Even though both the heroes and the villains prove equally barbarous, there’s never any question as to who’s good or bad in this black-and-white world. It’s only through Cassandra’s emotional arc that the audience sees any cracks in the totalitarian justice system.

As suggested by the wild shift in quality between his breakout docudrama “Omagh” and underwhelming follow-up “Vantage Point,” director Travis is only as strong as his source material. He gets a sturdy B-movie foundation here from Garland, who sets the tone by taking comicbook characters and situations seriously.

This earnest approach is evident in tech credits as well, most notably Anthony Dod Mantle ‘s cinematography, which eschews the jittery handheld imagery of Travis’ earlier films for more careful compositions. The judiciously spread-out “Slo-Mo” sequences are especially eye-catching.

Editor Mark Eckersley gets a workout in a trippy sequence in which Cassandra enters the mind of a remorseless prisoner (Wood Harris), and production designer Mark Digby relishes the details of establishing a functioning city (including a medical center, eateries and even a movie theater) within a massive high-rise.

Production: A Lionsgate release of a Lionsgate and Reliance Entertainment presentation in association with IM Global a DNA Films production. Produced by Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich, Alex Garland, Jason Kingsley, Chris Kingsley. Executive producers, Deepak Nayar, Stuart Ford, Adi Shankar. Co-producer, Michael S. Murphey. Co-executive producer, Michael Elson. Directed by Pete Travis. Screenplay, Alex Garland, based on the comicbook created by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra.
Crew: Camera (color, widescreen, 3D), Anthony Dod Mantle; editor, Mark Eckersley; music, Paul Leonard-Morgan; production designer, Mark Digby; costume designers, Michael O'Connor, Diana Cilliers; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat), Conrad Kuhne; sound designer, Glenn Freemantle; special effects supervisor, Max Poolman; visual effects supervisor, Jon Thum; visual effects, Prime Focus, Baseblack, View D, Mill Film; stunt coordinator, Franz Spilhaus; associate producer, Joanne Smith; assistant director, Lee Grumett; casting, Denton Douglas, Kate Dowd, Sarah Halley Finn. Reviewed at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, San Diego, July 11, 2012. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 96 MIN.
With: Judge Dredd - Karl Urban Anderson - Olivia Thirlby Ma-Ma - Lena Headey Kay - Wood Harris Judge Lex - Langley Kirkwood Amos - Junior Singo Freel - Luke Tyler Zwirner - Jason Cope Clan Techie - Domnhall Gleeson Caleb - Warrick Grier

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Dredd Review

07 Sep 2012

Two long shadows fall over Dredd, the second attempt to get 2000AD’s gnarly, grizzled super-cop onto the big screen. One of them, as you might expect, is Danny Cannon’s 1995’s Judge Dredd, the Sylvester Stallone vehicle that looked the part, but misunderstood the fundamentals right down to the inclusion of Rob Schneider as comic relief.

The second, though, is somewhat unexpected. In an ideal world, we’d be able to see and assess films in a bubble, but this isn’t an ideal world. Just as it was virtually impossible to watch Prometheus without unbidden thoughts of Alien, so it goes with Dredd and The Raid, Gareth Evans’ blistering Indonesian action flick which, in a perfect storm of horrible timing, has virtually the same plot, right down to the chief baddie putting out a hit on the hero via building-wide intercom.

This wouldn’t be to Dredd’s detriment if The Raid hadn’t a) got there first and b) been the best action film in years. And so, as Dredd and Anderson tiptoe down dark corridors, where danger lurks around every corner, or bullet-bludgeon their way through Ma-Ma’s seemingly endless waves of expendable henchmen, it’s hard not to compare and contrast with Evans’ movie, where similar situations led to action that was vital, insanely violent and full of variety. Dredd retains the extraordinary violence (flesh pierces rippling bare flesh in loving slo-mo, a machine gun reduces a head to a pulp, and bodies spiral through 200 storeys before splatting), but the action is rather more circumspect and workmanlike – there are no dizzying camera moves, no sense of building momentum or mounting danger.

That, overall, Dredd manages to obliterate the memory of Judge Dredd (and to a lesser extent, The Raid) is largely attributable to one of the things it gets absolutely, incontrovertibly right: Dredd himself. John Wagner’s creation is a tricky one to represent on the big screen: dour, one-note, humourless, dedicated to upholding the law above all other things, he’s Dirty Harry wearing fascism like his gold badge. The obvious temptation is to judge the Judge and soften him, to make him glib, to introduce back story and a sense that there’s a living, breathing, caring, sharing human being under there.

Dredd’s director, Pete Travis, and screenwriter Alex Garland, the driving force behind the reboot, say “drokk that!”, and transplant Dredd straight from the comics onto the screen. This Dredd is a deadpan delight - he doesn’t grow as a person and he doesn’t crack wise. In fact, the movie generates its few laughs from his sheer intractability – a grunt here, a monosyllabic response there. It’s a role that has to be handled with care, and luckily Urban is excellent. Unlike Stallone, the helmet stays on (in a cute touch, we first see him from behind without the headgear) and, without recourse to his eyes, Urban is forced to give good lower head, leading with the manliest movie chin this side of Kirk Douglas, and growling his lines in an Eastwood-meets-Pazuzu rasp that just about manages to stay the right side of tough-guy parody.

With Dredd unchanging, and Lena Headey’s quietly chilling villainess, Ma-Ma, proving equally monomaniacal, the emotional arc is given to Thirlby, whose engaging Anderson has to grow up quickly as the bullets start flying.

The focus on a small core of characters (including, happily, The Wire’s Avon Barksdale, Wood Harris, as Headey’s right-hand dealer), and the decision to restrict the action to Peach Trees is a byproduct of Dredd’s relatively miniscule (for a comic-book adaptation) budget. Dredd doesn’t have the capital to do an enormous Dark Knight Rises-style denouement, with the big action set-piece, involving Ma-Ma firing a cannon even more dangerous to Dredd than Danny, coming halfway through. Impressively, though, it never looks bargain basement – the murky green/brown colour scheme, along with the brief opening in Mega-City One (Johannesburg with some CG enhancements), clearly show that this post-apocalyptic world is rundown, seedy, gone to pot.

And that murk allows Travis to escape occasionally into the (literal) Slo-mo sequences. The drug, which makes users perceive time at one per cent of its normal speed, isn’t just an excuse for Peckinpah apeing, but for genuinely surreal splashes of heightened colour that, thankfully, don’t outstay their welcome. The film’s use of 3D is often excellent (including the credits) and it really comes to life in the Slo-mo scenes – Headey’s introduction, swirling rainbow-coloured droplets of bath water around in a drug-induced haze, will make this – ironically - a stoner favourite. Hey, we’re not judging.

There’s certainly enough here, despite the clunky action and oppressively dour tone, to make the prospect of a sequel intriguing. With a bigger budget, Dredd could get to play in a bigger sandpit. There’s a whole Cursed Earth out there, just waiting to be explored. But, if it doesn’t come to that, this is an honourable attempt at giving an iconic character the adaptation he deserved. Just don’t double-bill it with The Raid.

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Den of Geek

Dredd review

Karl Urban takes on the role of Mega-City One's iconic justice dispenser. Here's our review of Dredd…

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For every one of the problems with Dredd – and there are a few we’ll eventually get to – there’s really quite a lot to admire. Not least that it feels like the project started with a firm understanding of how its central character should be depicted, something that remains completely intact in the final cut.

Easily the hardest-edged comic book adaptation we’ve seen in a long, long time, this second attempt to bring Dredd to the big screen is a far more faithful beast than the oft-maligned 1995 movie. Right from the off, we’re dragged into the future world of Mega City One. It’s a horrible, dirty, sprawling rats’ nest of crime, full of endless concrete. It’s also overseen by a series of Judges, who act as judge, jury and executioner as they attempt to bring order to the city. If you’re looking for a definition of ‘unwinnable war’, what the Judges face in Mega-City One is a good place to start.

But that doesn’t stop them trying, and thus we meet Judge Dredd, played by Karl Urban – and unlike Sylvester Stallone’s take on the character, his helmet remains on his head for the entire movie. Urban’s Dredd channels Clint Eastwood (pre-empty chair incident), barking out words only when necessary, and never betraying the slightest hint of emotion. It’s an excellent performance from someone who clearly understands the role. The focus of the film itself is effectively on one day in Judge Dredd’s life, marrying up elements of Training Day and The Raid as it does so.

The premise here is that Dredd has this single day to find out whether new rookie Anderson has got what it takes to be a judge. Unfortunately, it’s also the day they end up in a 200-story building under the rule of drug baron Ma-Ma. She’s peddling a narcotic by the name of Slo-Mo, and Dredd and Anderson soon find themselves imprisoned in the block, fighting to bring the criminals within it to justice.

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It’s a simple setup, and quite a wise one. After all, this Dredd doesn’t have the budget of its contemporaries, and the money thus has to be spent very wisely. There’s some solid effects work to establish the perspective and tone of the city, but more interestingly, they filmmakers have spent the cash on details. Graphic displays, make-up, signs, little things in the background that give more realism and texture to a world than a computer graphic can generally give you.

The flip side to all of this, though, is there’s not actually a lot of story. Furthermore, even though Olivia Thirlby’s excellent Anderson (again, captured faithfully from the comics) – effectively in the Doctor Who companion role, narratively – carries the emotional burden of the film (not least in a sequence where she meets one of the block’s residents), there’s no real opportunity to get under the skin of the main characters. It boils down, then, to a simple case of law enforcers versus criminals, and not a lot more than that.

But it does commit to what it’s trying to do, and the world it’s trying to represent. Alex Garland’s sparse dialogue is harsh, and true to both Dredd and the original 2000AD strips. Furthermore, there’s no attempt whatsoever to soften the film. This is a brutal piece of work, and director Pete Travis doesn’t shy away from that at all. Blood splatters, people die in horrible circumstances, and the effects of Slo-Mo are ever present (although this does mean we get a few over-extended slow-motion scenes which outstay their welcomea little).

Credit, too, to Lena Headey, who’s already shown that she can be a complicated antagonist in Game Of Thrones . There isn’t the same depth to her character in Dredd , but as Ma-Ma, she’s a convincing villain, and there’s little doubting her commitment to the role. You’re never in any doubt at all that her character is a nasty, ruthless individual, living in a nasty, ruthless world.

Dredd is rough, loud and brash, then, a film that doesn’t get everything right, and has seen some of its thunder stolen by The Raid earlier this year. But it’s a movie you can’t help but commend.

Consider this: when Spider-Man 3 disappointed, Sony took the safe option with its following film of the webslinger, cutting all the edges off and making as conventional a movie as possible in The Amazing Spider-Man . The first Judge Dredd film, appreciating it was much further back, also disappointed, but the team behind Dredd have gone in the other direction. While others are looking to make comic book movies that appeal to the largest audience possible, those behind Dredd went right back to the darkness of the source material, and instead brought that to the screen. As a result, in the UK the film has an 18 certificate, and there’s no doubt whatsoever that it deserves it.

Dredd might not always make for the most even and enjoyable of films (and its box office returns will inevitably be dwarfed by the Batmans and Spider-Mans of the world). Yet when it sparks into life, when you see just how much care and passion is behind it, and when it all hangs together, it becomes clear that it’s not just a film that deserves to be seen, it’s one that deserves to be supported and applauded, too.

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Editor, author, writer, broadcaster, Costner fanatic. Now runs Film Stories Magazine.

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DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

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In Theaters

September 21, 2012
Karl Urban as Judge Dredd; Olivia Thirlby as Anderson; Lena Headey as Ma-Ma; Wood Harris as Kay

Home Release Date

January 8, 2013
Pete Travis

Distributor

Movie review.

When Ma-Ma ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy. And Ma-Ma’s having a really bad day.

Oh, you’d think this drug lordette would be doing just fine. After all, she manufactures and controls the illicit drug known as slo-mo for Mega-City One, an 800 million-person metropolis that covers much of what was once the eastern part of the United States. She’s holed up on the 200th floor of the Peach Trees complex, a building/neighborhood/vertical village housing 75,000 mostly unemployed saps—a great resource for goons. She’s worked and schemed and killed her way to the top, and now she’s looking to expand her operation. Life doesn’t get much better for a crime kingpin in this dystopian world.

But here’s the thing: Earlier today, she had a few minor thugs skinned and tossed off her 200th-floor balcony, and the resulting splat drew the attention of a pair of judges—a newbie named Anderson, and Dredd, a longtime vet of the force whose fearsome rep is bigger than the Peach Trees lobby.

Keep in mind that these judges have little in common with Judge Judy or Wapner or any other robe-wearing, gavel-pounding modern incarnation of “judge” you might think of. Judges in this particular where-and-when brandish guns instead of gavels, serving as Mega-City One’s police, its jury and its executioner. Each has a license to obliterate, and they’re not afraid to use it.

Ordinarily, Ma-Ma would let the judges kill a few expendable henchmen and arrest a couple more. No point in attracting other judges to the region, after all. But Dredd and Anderson have nabbed Kay—a mid-level Ma-Ma’s boy who knows way too much about her operation. Ma-Ma can’t let Kay be interrogated, which means either he or they or all three can’t leave the complex alive.

But killing off a judge, particularly Dredd, is no simple matter. And Ma-Ma wonders whether she’ll have enough expendable henchmen to pull it off.

Positive Elements

Justice and morality are hard to find in the murky world Dredd inhabits, and when they are found, they don’t look much like what we have now. Folks don’t really adhere to the whole “innocent until proven guilty” maxim. A jury of one’s peers? With 17,000 major crimes committed every day, there’s no time. The judges are as good as it gets in Mega-City One.

But within those admittedly faulty confines, we gotta give Dredd and Anderson props for doing the best they can under the circumstances.

Dredd might be as close as we’re going to get to a Boy Scout in this fractured future. A stickler for law and order, he wields his judicial power like a scythe, cutting down fields of bad guys like so much wheat … while trying to never overstep his legal bounds. He is skilled, incorruptible and nigh unstoppable—a veritable angel of death in body armor.

Anderson isn’t any of those things … yet. It’s her first day on the job, after all, and while she fervently wants to help and protect the citizens of Mega-City One, she’s not yet shed the copious amounts of blood the job seems to require. Still, she shows pity and occasionally lets the “bad guys”—folks she believes are as much victims of Ma-Ma’s machinations as participants—go. “Maybe it’ll be the one [positive] difference I do make,” she tells Dredd. So if Dredd’s all justice and judgment, Anderson shows us what grace might look like when the world has long since come apart at the seams.

Spiritual Elements

Anderson is psychic. (But the ability is presented as biological, not spiritual; she’s called a mutant a few times.)

Sexual Content

Learning that Anderson is psychic and wanting to throw her off her game, Kay thinks up explicit sexual fantasies involving the two of them. Anderson and audiences see these fantasies in stylized sequences. In one a naked Anderson is bent over with Kay standing behind her. She jerks her head in slow motion—as if she’s been slapped—with saliva flying from her mouth. In another, she unzips her outfit in front of Kay and disrobes. (We see her from the back.) She kneels down as if to perform oral sex, but then changes Kay’s fantasy so that it’s Ma-Ma, with her mouth covered in blood.

We learn that Ma-Ma was once a prostitute operating in a Mega-City One “pleasure district” before someone cut up her face. It’s stated that she “feminized” her consort with her teeth (implying that she bit the man’s penis or testicles off). We see her in a bathtub from the shoulders up.

Violent Content

It’s possible that thousands of people die in this movie, with several dozen of them expiring onscreen. And when slo-mo addicts die while on the drug, we see their deaths in freakishly slow motion. Several people are shot while using, and bullets tear through skin and fat as if they were subjects of an incredibly morbid PBS special. One bullet exits a man’s cheek, leaving the ragged skin around the hole flapping like a tattered flag. Another user falls from a great height: Here, the camera lens doubles as the ground, whereupon the victim’s face splits open, is mangled and gushes blood until nothing but red is visible.

Ma-Ma orders three people to be skinned alive and thrown from her balcony. We hear the screams and, in flashback, see someone peeling skin away from a body. The victims fall to the ground with horrible, tomato-like splats, and when a judge examines the bodies more closely, it’s revealed how much of one skull had caved in. A man’s head gets shot to the point where it starts losing shape.

An evil henchman loses his hand and forearm when a booby trapped weapon blows up in his grip. He gapes at the remaining stump before a judge polishes him off. Anderson’s ordered to kill a wounded goon (blood already seeping out of the guy’s mouth), and she does, shooting him point-blank in the head. Judge Dredd fires an incendiary that sets several thugs ablaze. They flail and run, and at least one falls off a balcony. Dredd guns down dozens more, the impact of the bullets often accompanied by spurts of blood. He beats down one suspect, punching, head-butting and choking the guy, finally leaving his face a bloody mess.

You’re probably noticing a trend by now.

An innocent pedestrian is struck by a van full of criminals, and we see the bloody impact of the body on the windshield. A man is squished by a closing blast door. Countless people are murdered when Ma-Ma uses massive machine guns to all but obliterate an entire level of the complex. She embeds a device in her wrist that, if she dies, will bring Peach Trees down and kill the rest of its 75,000 residents.

Dredd suffers a gaping wound in his midsection, which he cleans and staples shut. He also dabs at an injury that leaves Anderson temporarily immobile. A man has his eyes replaced with cyborg-like eyeball-cameras, and we see a bit of the procedure, with the bloodied, temporarily eyeless victim screaming in pain. Corpses often lie untended.

Crude or Profane Language

More than 50 f-words, a dozen or so s-words and a half-dozen uses of “b‑‑ch.” There’s also one misuse of God’s name in which it’s mashed up with both the f-word and “d‑‑n.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Drug abuse is a big part of Dredd’ s plot: We see inhalers and vials filled with slo-mo, a massive lab where the stuff is manufactured, and loads of people who are high on the stuff.

But we also see the negative impact the drug has. Ma-Ma looks like a meth addict, complete with sunken eyes and rotting teeth. Many of her henchmen seem addled and/or impaired. A homeless man carries a cardboard sign that describes him as a junkie who will “debase himself for food.”

Other Negative Elements

A man urinates on himself. A handful of judges accept a bribe to kill one of their own.

A judge describes Mega-City One as nothing but a glorified meat grinder. “People go in one end and meat comes out the other,” he tells Dredd. “All we do is turn the handle.”

That meat grinder works overtime in Dredd , and most of the characters we see here are treated with all the sympathy of sausages. Anderson and Dredd both notify their home base when there are bodies ready not for burial but for recycling . And in one scene a city street cleaner motors through a pool of blood, trying to sweep up the mess.

Indeed, Dredd’s world is all but devoid of the civility, decency and morality that proves we’re more than meat. As such, the film’s carnage and nifty-icky special effects seem designed to stress how frail and mortal and meaty we all are. There’s not much that separates us from your standard pork chop, the film seems to want to tell us.

Arguably, that callous appraisal of humanity helps draw attention to those characters who do aspire to be something more: The guy who tries to help the judges (though he’s immediately shot for his trouble) or the woman who just wants to see her husband come home safe (though he’s already lying dead somewhere). Judges Dredd and Anderson, most especially, show us that even in this bleak, horrible world, there are still those who adhere to and dole out justice—and even sometimes dispense a bit of grace with it.

Which is nice and all, I guess. But, really, do any of us need a movie like this to learn that lesson? Have we been reduced so far down to the lowest common denominator that we require an R-rated corpse-and-corpuscle festival to tell us we’re more than the sum of our parts? A dreadful notion, that.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Dredd movie review

Review I haven't seen The Raid, the skirmish-in-a-skyscraper flick so many Dredd reviewers have compared with this latest attempt to bring 2000AD 's favourite anti-hero to the big screen. But I have been reading the comic on and off since 1977 - more on than off; it went a bit crap in the 1990s - and Judge Dredd remains a weekly joy, especially when penned by co-creator John Wagner.

And I have to admit, I have a soft spot for the 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle. Like it or loathe it, you can't argue that the move got the punked-up visual style of the comic, defined primarily by co-creator Carlos Ezquerra and fellow artist Mike McMahon, off pat.

I am the law

Dredd presents an altogether bleaker, more grimy view, a 2012 take on the future rather than one from 1980. With its widely spaced cityblocks, low-rise areas threaded with multi-lane motorways, dawn mist and harsh sunlight, Dredd 's Mega City One look more like a developing world metropolis than the hi-tech New York version from 2000AD .

Out goes the spikey hair, safety pins and kneepads, and in come hoodies and puffer jackets, sweaty singlets, gold chains and tracksuits. It's kids who can't pull their pants up properly who scare adults today, not the punk rockers of the 1970s, and Dredd draws a bead accordingly.

It's the future and it's urban, innit?

Dredd 's Mega-City One is more low-rise than high

To me it looks wrong, too far from the source material, too close to the now. The cits here could be inserted without change into any movie set in late 20th Century LA - Latin America or Los Angeles, take your pick. The decor is low-tech. The concrete bare or shit-stained. It doesn't feel futuristic at all. The action's setting, a megastructure called Peach Trees - it should have been Howard Marx Block - is more housing estate than the house of tomorrow.

But it's perhaps a fair call on the part of the film's makers. Dredd 's dystopia is less culturally centred than the one depicted in 2000AD , the better to appeal to audiences across the globe, many of whom will live in places not so very different to this. And the truth is, we've seen the 2000AD Mega-City One too often in movies since, from Blade Runner onwards. Neon washed, rain splashed cityscapes have been done to death.

Likewise, as a fan, I don't like Dredd 's pared back uniform, a dust-covered black glorified flack jacket that, yes, might be more practical than a full Eagle and pads, but simply isn't iconic in the way the comic's uniform is. And with all the judges as grubby as the cits, it's hard to accept this is an elite force.

Perpspotting: punks out, hoodies in. Innit

At least Karl Urban never takes his helmet off - there's an in-shadow, back of the head shot early on - the crew were wise enough to understand that, like Batman's cowl and Spider-man's mask, Dredd's helmet is his face.

A colleague enthusiastically told me Dredd will take me right back to the 1970s, with the kind of punchy, violent stories they told back then. And they were only five pages long, too. At just shy of two hours, Dredd isn't long either, its welcome is not overstayed and then some the way last two Dark Knight movies were. Director Pete Travis keeps it nicely tight.

The plot, such as it is - cops isolated and hunted down; High Noon in a high-rise - is straightforward, providing a justification for the action and little else. There are plenty of things fans will regonise - 'Muties out' and Chopper graffiti; Lawgivers with multiple ammo types, and which explode, devastatingly, when used by a civilian - but the backstory is kept to the back. Viewers new to Dredd's world will get the gist without any who, what or why interrupting the action.

The boys and girls in blue, kind of

Which is handled by Travis with appropriate intensity, though none of the black humour that informs most comic book violence, Judge Dredd 's in particular. This is one bloody movie, its 18 certificate justified. It's sure to be cut for domestic viewing.

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Review: ‘Dredd’ A Visually Strong, Engaging But Ultimately Empty Cinematic Experience

Todd gilchrist.

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Remakes and reboots always seem to demand comparisons to their predecessors, but “ Dredd ” evokes a slightly different relationship: What Zack Snyder ’s “ Dawn of the Dead ” is to George Romero ’s original, Pete Travis ’ film is to, no, not Danny Cannon ’s 1995 film “ Judge Dredd ,” but Paul Verhoeven ’s “ Robocop .” In both cases, gifted visual stylists took fertile, socially-conscious subject matter, pared out the cultural commentary, and left behind an engaging, if empty, cinematic experience. And for the most part, that works, although the abrupt ending of Travis’ film only highlights its thematic vacuousness, while Snyder’s bleak post-credits punchline successfully disguised it (at least at the time). Nevertheless, by far the better of the two cinematic interpretations of this particular character, “Dredd” is a video game procedural tied to great visuals, but one without deeper substance to make its experience remotely meaningful.

Karl Urban plays Judge Dredd, the most fearsome scowl in all of Mega-City One. After dispassionately “judging” (that means kill) a trio of drugged-out criminals, Dredd is handed a babysitting job by his superior: evaluate a comely recruit named Cassandra Anderson ( Olivia Thirlby ) whose tests are below par but whose psychic abilities make her too valuable to dismiss. On their first call, Dredd and Anderson respond to a triple homicide at Peach Trees, a housing project which has been overtaken by Ma-Ma ( Lena Headey ) as a production facility for a new drug called Slo-Mo. But after they apprehend one of her foot soldiers, Kay ( Wood Harris ), for questioning, Ma-Ma shuts down the building and unleashes its denizens on the two Judges, putting them in a deadly struggle to escape with their suspect – and their lives – intact.

Fans of the character will be relieved to know that Dredd doesn’t face the sort of deconstructionist, deep-rooted moral struggle he was confronted with in Cannon’s film; from start to finish, the Judge retains his mostly implacable, gruff authority. Instead, screenwriter Alex Garland (“ 28 Days Later ,” “ Sunshine ”) gives him a soupcon of humanity – not to mention humor – and then tests it incrementally both via his relationship with Anderson and his totalitarian attitudes about delivering justice. What works best about the duo’s dynamic is that Anderson isn’t a feeble-minded rookie, but a formidable companion whose skill set is simply different than Dredd’s. And when she introduces a few shades of grey into his black and white attitudes about crime and punishment, the transformation is rewardingly subtle.

At the same time, his transformation is never reflected in the larger ideas the film attempts to examine – mostly because it doesn’t seem like there are larger ideas. Anderson’s passing mention of her upbringing in a housing project like Peach Trees notwithstanding, the movie never pauses to contextualize their judgments, nor to contemplate the value – or danger — of a totalitarian regime. When innocents are killed, they only matter as a justification for their killers’ eventual, bloody death at the hands of the Judges. All of which is, if not fine, then at least intentional for the vast majority of the film’s running time; “Dredd” dares its target audience not to embrace the carnage, and alternates just enough between “that’s horrible” and “that’s horribly awesome” to keep viewers from seriously contemplating the glib amorality with which it depicts the (in)significance of human life.

Perhaps understandably, it sounds like I really didn’t like the film, but “Dredd” mostly works on its own terms – even if they were probably written in crayon. Travis’ direction, augmented by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (“ 127 Hours ”), is remarkable and unique, lending the action a grisly but poetic feel; whether the Slo-Mo drug was the chicken or egg in the duo’s development of their visual style, it creates a sort of foundation for the speed and texture of the rest of the film, and looks absolutely stunning every time it’s used. Simultaneously, Travis and Mantle are liberal but judicious about the violence, never turning away from an opportunity to show Dredd or Anderson blow a hole in a perp, but also not quite doing it in a way that crosses a line from bleakly funny to just plain bleak.

As Dredd, Urban either has a better character to play than Stallone did, or simply has a better grasp on what makes him tick, but the actor continues to distinguish himself as a versatile performer who turns mimicry into emotional meaning. Following his turn as Bones in J.J. Abrams ’ “ Star Trek ,” he demonstrates that he understands how and where the differences are between the silhouette of an iconic character and the actual substance. Meanwhile, Thirlby seems as if she’d be outclassed or simply under-weighted to play even a rookie cop, but the actress demonstrates she’s no shrinking violet, and more than holds her own next to Urban’s comparatively imposing frame. Her external resolve and her internal struggle feel well-calibrated, making Anderson feel like a natural part of the world of Mega-City One, even when she’s meant to serve as proxy for the audience’s doubts or questions about it.

Nevertheless, Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” and Verhoeven’s “Robocop” indulged in plenty of gratuitous violence and pure, sophomoric fun, and yet both films possessed a political and social consciousness that elevated their prurient charms. Within genre conventions, “Dredd” satsfies as a containment thriller, buddy cop movie and futuristic action gorefest; the performances are strong, the characters thoughtfully developed and the visuals beautifully executed. But if just asking the question “What was that film actually about?” is all that’s necessary to undermine the surface-level enjoyment of watching Urban and Thirlby fight their way out of a well-designed structure, why does it matter – not to mention, why should we care — if they ever succeed? [B-]

This is a reprint of our review from Comic-Con .

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Review: dredd 4k uhd + screen caps.

Dredd (2012)

Genre(s): Science Fiction, Action Lionsgate | R – 96 min. – $22.99 | June 6, 2017

Date Published: 05/28/2017 | Author: The Movieman

Note: Portions of this were copied from my 2012 review.

Check out some more screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers .

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Nothing To 'Dredd' About A New Action Adaptation

Joel Arnold

Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is responsible for both convicting and punishing the criminals of Mega-City One. Joe Alblas/Lionsgate hide caption

Director: Pete Travis
Genres: Action, Sci-Fi
Running Time: 98 minutes

Rated R for strong bloody violence, language, drug use and some sexual content

With: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey

(Recommended)

The prestige film festivals were abuzz this month with independent films and possible awards contenders, but for movies opening wide, September is traditionally a dump month — a fallow time between the summer and Oscar season when studios release films expected to underperform.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but given its vital stats, you wouldn't be faulted for casting a wary eye at Dredd, a 3-D actioner set in a ruined urban dystopia and arguably better suited to a summer release. Add to the red flags that this film is actually the second attempt at adapting the long-running British comic about a law-enforcement officer with the power of judge, jury and executioner — 1995's Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone, was a critical and financial disappointment — and the smart money would say avoid this iteration.

Forget the timing, and forget the overstuffed, schlocktastic Stallone movie. (Unless you'd like to relive some truly spectacular line readings .) Not only is Dredd a smart bit of September counterprogramming, it's a gleefully audacious, visceral, near-perfect action movie.

In Mega-City One, a vast and decaying metropolis stretching from Boston to D.C., Dredd (Karl Urban, the Bones McCoy in the latest Star Trek film) patrols the streets as a member of the Judges, a corps of individuals equally expert in combat and the law. As the last remaining political authority of a megalopolis in chaos, the Judges arrest, sentence and even execute criminals on the spot with a grim and practiced efficiency.

Dredd represents the paragon of that system, workmanlike in his relentless pursuit of justice and as unbending as the law he enforces. In an especially bloody opening that feels all too routine, Dredd pursues and dispatches a murderous criminal who, at the last minute, takes a civilian hostage.

"Negotiation's over," Dredd growls, before applying a creative solution to the problem. Stylized violence abounds that would seem a better fit for a B-movie, were each act of brutality not rendered with horrifying and at times visually stunning specificity that's only enhanced by 3-D.

Judge Dredd and his protege, Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), fight a drug lord in a post-apocalyptic slum. Joe Alblas/Lionsgate hide caption

Judge Dredd and his protege, Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), fight a drug lord in a post-apocalyptic slum.

Watching an unstoppable force kick ass and deliver surprisingly effective one-liners would make for a rousing if ultimately limited experience; wisely, the film ups the stakes by pairing its merciless and impenetrable protagonist with an earnest rookie in need of evaluation. Dredd's superior asks him to ignore that Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), trained but untested in the field, didn't quite pass the necessary tests to become a Judge — the radiation on the city's outskirts has mutated her, though fortunately the result was valuable psychic powers rather than a third or fourth arm.

Writer Alex Garland, who penned the sci-fi thriller 28 Days Later and the more personal Never Let Me Go , resists the impulse to overload on fan-service mythology, instead presenting Dredd 's complex and potentially overwhelming source material through the sharp lens of a day-in-the-life story.

Dredd and Anderson respond to a triple homicide at Peach Trees, one of the city's massive housing complexes, where they pick up the trail of a new drug called Slo-Mo, which makes users feel as if time is passing at a tiny fraction of its normal rate. When Peach Trees' ruthless gang boss Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) discovers them snooping around her block, she shuts down the building and invites its 75,000 inhabitants to kill the Judges if they want to go outside again.

Dredd doesn't blink at a death sentence — or if he does, the formidable helmet covering half his face doesn't show it. (The hat makes for some impressive nose-down acting from Urban.) He keeps calm angry and carries on, a superhero upholding society's status quo without a society left to save. That the world is crumbling around him makes little difference to Dredd — he enforces the law and continues to drill Anderson as they try to fight their way out.

Ma-Ma's thugs constantly challenge the Judges, making their dangerous situation increasingly more desperate, and director Pete Travis takes full advantage of the claustrophobic halls of the tenement, staging muscular and kinetic action sequences that eschew post-production computer effects. Scenes involving Slo-Mo, especially, are dazzlingly realized in 3-D by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle; while extreme in its violence, Dredd even portrays blood spatter with graceful lyricism.

While Dredd himself is mostly a conundrum, Urban brings nuance to the character, infusing him with a bestial but purposeful physicality and giving him a harsh voice that would beat Batman's to a pulp. As Anderson, Thirlby grounds the film emotionally; the stakes for her are higher than just her own life, as she experiences for the first time the realities and costs of the job.

There's a cynical way to look at Dredd , if it's successful: proof for Hollywood that eventually any property can be made to work. But that would miss the point entirely. Dredd works because it's an action flick with wide appeal that takes risks it doesn't need to — in its delightfully off-putting violence and daring style — and those choices pay off in a singular and exhilarating movie experience. It's savage, beautiful and loads of fun. (Recommended)

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Out Here, the Judge Is Also the Jury

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By Manohla Dargis

Sept. 20, 2012

It’s bang, bang, splat, splat for the 98 unmodulated minutes that are “Dredd 3D,” an action movie written by Alex Garland and directed by Pete Travis. Grim, gory and devoid of pleasure, kinetic or otherwise, this is the second big-screen take on the British comics series Judge Dredd, after a 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle best remembered for Sly’s shiny, oversize codpiece. Like that movie, this one takes place in ye olde dystopia, a neo-wild West in which the gizmos look futuristic, but everything else — the drooling cretins, generic innocents, slathering villainy and fascistic overtones — is B-movie familiar, although with 100 percent more digitally enhanced carnage.

Karl Urban, his face almost completely obscured by Dredd’s mask, plays the monosyllabic hero who’s cop, judge, jury and trigger-happy executioner in one expressionless package. Bullets and bodies start flying after Dredd and his junior partner (Olivia Thirlby) are trapped in a complex run by a prostitute turned underworld lord (Lena Headey, taking a break from her wicked ways as Cersei on HBO’s “Game of Thrones”). Guns are fired; viscera squishes, squirts and sprays in 3-D and sometimes in slow motion. Every so often there’s a suggestion that a police state may actually be a lousy idea, but this thought dies even faster than the disposable characters.

“Dredd 3D” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Extreme violence.

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Based on the 2000 AD comic strip Judge Dredd, Karl Urban stars as Dredd, a law enforcer given the power of judge, jury, and executioner in a vast, dystopic metropolis that lies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Excellent action movie, similar to The Raid.

Whilst it does have its fans, you will be hard pressed to find anyone showering praise on the 1995 big-screen outing for iconic 2000AD comic book character, Judge Dredd , starring Sylvester Stallone. He takes his helmet off, for goodness sake! Dredd doesn’t take his helmet off! That movie was a big-budget Hollywood affair, but the cheaper Dredd , released in 2012 and sadly flying under the radar of many moviegoers, was a much more gritty affair.

Written by (and also reportedly ghost directed by) Alex Garland ( The Beach , Annihilation , Ex Machina ), Dredd stars Karl Urban as the permanently helmeted titular character tasked with delivering swift violent justice as judge, jury, and executioner in the dystopian crime saturated world of Mega-City One.

Although written over the course of many years, the movie features a similar plot to superb Indonesian movie The Raid released the year before: a crime lord is sitting pretty at the top of a skyscraper and our leads must fight their way from the bottom up in order to confront them.

Dredd triumphs over the 90s effort in every conceivable way. Instead of getting bogged down in origin stories or excessive world building, the movie is essentially ‘a day in the life of Judge Dredd’. His gruff severe nature is countered by rookie Judge, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), with whom he has been reluctantly partnered and tasked with assessing her suitability for graduation. Their mission is to investigate three murders within Peach Trees, a 200 storey slum building, leading them to battle to bring down drug lord ‘Ma-Ma’ (Lena Headey) whose designer drug ‘Slo-Mo’ makes users experience time at 1% of normal speed.

Such a set up requires minimal characters which suits the movie well. Urban and Thirlby are an excellent combination and she humanises Dredd by proxy, allowing the smallest of character arcs in a character not known for progressing at any visible speed. Similarly, Anderson has the ‘rookie thrown in at the deep end arc’, paired with the fact she possesses psychic abilities that allow her to experience the emotions of those around her. Headey is suitably nasty but with a pinch of world weariness that gives her Ma-Ma villain a little something extra sweet.

Again with The Raid as a reference point, Dredd has a great combination of violence and action throughout. Even with the setting ‘limited’ to one (albeit massive) building, there is room for motorbike chases, gun battles, and brawling fights. The choreography of the movie not only ensures that each fight is suitably meaty, but the futurism is expressed with undeniably cool effect work. Dredd’s signature gun (the ‘Lawgiver) is a multi-functional piece of weaponry, and the way the camera slooooows to a crawl when we see someone under the influence of the Slo-Mo drug is just gorgeous.

Dredd really has a lot going for it. It was criminally overlooked on release but has built a cult following on home media formats. Karl Urban acts his jaw off throughout one of the most satisfyingly contained and yet sprawling action movies you will see. The only question is: are you ready to administer justice?

Words by Mike Record

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Dredd (United States/United Kingdom, 2012)

Originally, Dredd , the second motion picture incarnation of the British comic book hero, was due for a mid-August U.S. release. Distributor Lionsgate, buoyed by a positive reactions at advance screenings, decided to move the film out of the "dumping ground" wasteland of late summer and into the earliest days of autumn. Despite obvious (but mostly superficial) similarities to The Raid: Redemption , Dredd can claim to be sufficiently different to avoid being labeled a rip-off. It's also much closer to the comic book than the Hollywood-ized 1995 version that starred Sylvester Stallone in the title role.

This time around, Judge Dredd is played by Karl Urban, although you'd never know it was Doctor Leonard McCoy under the mask if not for the credits. As in the comics, Dredd never removes his mask, so the most we see of Urban are his lips and stubbled chin. Also, he speaks in a throaty growl that sounds a lot like Christian Bale's Batman. Dredd is less a character than an icon. He shows no emotion and, although he utters the occasional one-liner, he's as straightforward as they come. Think Robocop .

As in The Raid: Redemption , this is about an attempt by law enforcement officers to infiltrate a high rise building that has been co-opted by gangsters, fight their way to the top, and take out the chief bad guys. The Raid: Redemption is more bloody and visceral, but Dredd offers its own pleasures, chief of which is a scene of mayhem in which the villain, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), takes out an entire floor of the complex in a futile attempt to kill two judges. It's pretty spectacular stuff. And, once Dredd runs out of ammo, the level of tension escalates remarkably.

Dredd has an associate, rookie judge Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a mop-haired blond who eschews headgear. She is being assessed for a pass/fail grade by Dredd. Her test scores were judged "marginal," but she has been accorded an opportunity in the field because of her impressive psychic abilities. She's unprepared for Dredd's brutality, but adapts quickly. She also plays mind games with a prisoner they take during their initial raid of the Peach Tree high rise. Kay (Wood Harris) knows something about Ma-Ma that she doesn't want him to tell anyone, and Anderson goes mucking around in his mind out to find out what it is. It turns out that Peach Tree is ground zero for the manufacture and distribution of a new drug, Slo-Mo (makes the brain think time is moving at 1% of actual speed), and there's nothing Ma-Ma won't do to protect that secret. Trapping two judges in the building and hunting them down is child's play. Or so she thinks.

The action scenes are graphic and well choreographed with a slightly artistic edge. Visually, Dredd is impressive, with the digital rendering of Mega-City One offering the most satisfying helping of visual candy. Dredd was filmed in 3-D, but there are problems. Most of these occur during special effects-laden scenes that attempt to represent reality through a Slo-Mo filter. The 3-D comes across as artificial and overdone in these sequences. There is also noticeable blur during a few of the action scenes. Director Pete Travis does, however, solve the problem of things being too dark. Dredd has just about the right level of lighting.

If there's a serious disappointment, it's the villain. Ma-Ma, despite being played with over-the-top zest by Lena Headey, isn't a very impressive foil for the mighty Judge Dredd, even when she calls for "back-up." Heady is so inconsequential that the final confrontation seems more like an afterthought than an important moment in the story. It's a little like Superman confronting Lex Luthor, except in this case Lex doesn't have any Kryptonite on hand.

Unlike many post-apocalyptic scenarios, the one presented in Dredd offers sufficient glimpses of a dystopian future without overselling the dark, ugly miseries of this future. The background is strong enough to make some of the movie's more outlandish elements seem credible and to represent the dour Judge Dredd as a paragon of justice. There's also a fair amount of dark humor, often of the gallows variety, that never seems out-of-place. Not much of what Dredd has to offer is new or groundbreaking, but the fusion of familiar elements generates a smartly-paced, suspenseful 90 minutes that's a vast improvement over the 1995 film, although not quite on par with The Raid: Redemption when it comes to pure, unexpurgated action.

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The first voice we hear in "Judge Dredd" belongs to James Earl (Darth Vader) Jones, reading the words that crawl up the screen, describing a future world in which most of the Earth is a wasteland, and humans huddle in closed, violent megacities. Jones' voice, along with the words crawling up the screen, are reminders of "Star Wars." The fact that he has to read them is a reminder that in 1977, when "Star Wars" came out, audiences didn't need to have them read. We are getting closer to the wasteland every day.

The movie is based on a comic book series about that future time, when anarchy reigns, and the citizens massacre one another in "Block Wars," using machineguns to fight violent battles just for the fun of it, I guess, since the movie never really provides their motivation. The only force for law and order are the Judges - heavily armed and armored cops who double as judge and jury, and often execute criminals right on the spot.

Dredd is played by Sylvester Stallone , who is ideal for a role like this because he's smart and funny enough to pull it off. The screenplay gives him little help, however, with a love interest ( Diane Lane ) who never really connects, a comic sidekick named Fergie ( Rob Schneider ) who seems badly out of tune, and a tag line ("I knew you'd say that") that doesn't exactly rank with "Make my day" or even "I'll be back." The special effects are messy and cluttered, but atmospheric; they show us a Megacity that looks like a cross between the cities in " Blade Runner " and "Total Recall," with buildings towering into the sky and gangs rumbling in the streets and helpful neon signs that say things like "Store." Judge Dredd and his partner Judge Hershey (Lane) patrol the streets and shoot it out with bad guys, and Dredd arrests Fergie for being in the apartment of some outlaws Dredd has just killed.

"But I had only been there five minutes!" Fergie cries.

"You could have jumped out of the window." "Forty floors up? That would be suicide!" "But it's legal," says Dredd, who is an unbending law enforcer until he, himself, is convicted of the murder of a TV newsman. How do they know he did it? Well, the guns of the future imprint each bullet with the DNA of the person who fired it, and so Dredd is shipped to Aspen Prison Colony. Then we learn from Senior Judge (Max Von Sydow) that Dredd was cloned, and has an identical brother ( Armand Assante ) who could have supplied the same DNA. This is an angle the Simpson defense team shouldn't overlook.

The movie cheerfully borrows from everywhere. Besides the movies already mentioned, it lifts bits of "Mad Max" and " The Hills Have Eyes " in a subplot involving the Angel family, who live in a cave in the hinterlands and barbecue their human victims. One of the Angel brothers has a dial implanted in his forehead, so his anger level can be adjusted. Nice touch. His IQ seems set on Defrost.

"Judge Dredd" never slows down enough to make much sense; it's a "Blade Runner" for audiences with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Stallone survives it, but his supporting cast, also including an uninvolved Joan Chen and a tremendously intense Jurgen Prochnow , isn't well used. Only Assante, as the rogue Judge who frames his brother, holds up under the material, although the movie doesn't exploit the brother angle, maybe because that would have involved dialogue of more than one sentence at a time.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Judge Dredd (1995)

Rated R For Continuous Violent Action

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Dredd
Mega City One is a vast, violent metropolis where felons rule the streets. The only law lies with cops called "judges," who act as judge, jury and executioner, and Dredd (Karl Urban) is one of the ...
Dredd (2012)
DavidH8545 7 September 2012. 'Dredd' is an efficient and entertaining action movie, with lots of memorable moments, kills and one-liners. I really hope that everyone goes out to see the movie, because how often do we really get an extremely violent, faithful, intelligent science fiction movie in cinemas nowadays.
Dredd
The future America is an irradiated waste land. On its East Coast, running from Boston to Washington DC, lies Mega City One--a vast, violent metropolis where criminals rule the chaotic streets. The only force of order lies with the urban cops called "Judges" who possess the combined powers of judge, jury and instant executioner. Known and feared throughout the city, Dredd is the ultimate Judge.
Dredd
Dredd is a 2012 science fiction action film directed by Pete Travis and written and produced by Alex Garland. ... On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 80%, based on 171 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Fueled by bombastic violence and impressive special effects, rooted ...
Dredd Movie Review
Parents need to know that Dredd is based on the futuristic comic book hero Judge Dredd, who was also the subject of a 1995 Sylvester Stallone movie.Expect to see extreme sci-fi/fantasy violence, with thousands of bullets fired, gallons of blood spilled, and hundreds of casualties, including victims being splattered and burned, their necks broken and eyes gouged.
Dredd
Dredd - review. S hot in South Africa, set in Mega City One, a massive conurbation of an overpopulated, dystopian America of the near future, this 3D adventure of the comic book Judge Dredd ...
Dredd
Dredd - review. Karl Urban gets the essence of the 2000AD anti-character in a canny adaptation. Phelim O'Neill. Thu 6 Sep 2012 16.50 EDT. 98. A common mistake in screen adaptations - and one ...
Dredd (2012)
Dredd: Directed by Pete Travis. With Karl Urban, Rachel Wood, Andile Mngadi, Porteus Xandau. In a violent, futuristic city where the police have the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner, a cop teams with a trainee to take down a gang that deals the reality-altering drug, SLO-MO.
Dredd
Dredd Grim, gritty and ultra-violent, "Dredd" reinstates the somber brutality missing from the U.K. comicbook icon's previous screen outing, the disappointing 1995 Sylvester Stallone starrer ...
Dredd Review
Dredd Review. Judge Dredd (Urban), Mega-City One's top law enforcer, is reluctantly paired with psychic rookie Anderson (Thirlby) as her assessor for the day - a day that quickly sees them ...
Dredd review
Alex Garland's sparse dialogue is harsh, and true to both Dredd and the original 2000AD strips. Furthermore, there's no attempt whatsoever to soften the film. This is a brutal piece of work ...
Dredd
Dredd suffers a gaping wound in his midsection, which he cleans and staples shut. He also dabs at an injury that leaves Anderson temporarily immobile. A man has his eyes replaced with cyborg-like eyeball-cameras, and we see a bit of the procedure, with the bloodied, temporarily eyeless victim screaming in pain. ...
Dredd movie review • The Register
Dredd presents an altogether bleaker, more grimy view, a 2012 take on the future rather than one from 1980. With its widely spaced cityblocks, low-rise areas threaded with multi-lane motorways, dawn mist and harsh sunlight, Dredd's Mega City One look more like a developing world metropolis than the hi-tech New York version from 2000AD. Out goes the spikey hair, safety pins and kneepads, and in ...
Review: 'Dredd' A Visually Strong, Engaging But ...
Remakes and reboots always seem to demand comparisons to their predecessors, but "Dredd" evokes a slightly different relationship: What Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" is to George ...
Review: Dredd 4K UHD
Dredd is an amazing sci-fi action/thriller that seems to finally get the character right. The action is incredible, the visual effect top notch and Karl Urban, given very little to work with, is effective in the title role. Dredd. (2012) Genre (s): Science Fiction, Action. Lionsgate | R - 96 min. - $22.99 | June 6, 2017.
Movie Reviews
Joe Alblas/Lionsgate. Dredd. Director: Pete Travis. Genres: Action, Sci-Fi. Running Time: 98 minutes. Rated R for strong bloody violence, language, drug use and some sexual content. With: Karl ...
'Dredd 3D,' With Karl Urban
Dredd 3D. Directed by Pete Travis. Action, Crime, Sci-Fi. R. 1h 35m. By Manohla Dargis. Sept. 20, 2012. It's bang, bang, splat, splat for the 98 unmodulated minutes that are "Dredd 3D," an ...
Dredd Movie Review
8.7. Great. Based on the 2000 AD comic strip Judge Dredd, Karl Urban stars as Dredd, a law enforcer given the power of judge, jury, and executioner in a vast, dystopic metropolis that lies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Excellent action movie, similar to The Raid. Whilst it does have its fans, you will be hard pressed to find anyone showering ...
dredd
Weekend Box Office Results: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Opens with $45 Million March 25, 2024
Dredd
Visually, Dredd is impressive, with the digital rendering of Mega-City One offering the most satisfying helping of visual candy. Dredd was filmed in 3-D, but there are problems. Most of these occur during special effects-laden scenes that attempt to represent reality through a Slo-Mo filter. The 3-D comes across as artificial and overdone in ...
Judge Dredd movie review & film summary (1995)
The first voice we hear in "Judge Dredd" belongs to James Earl (Darth Vader) Jones, reading the words that crawl up the screen, describing a future world in which most of the Earth is a wasteland, and humans huddle in closed, violent megacities. Jones' voice, along with the words crawling up the screen, are reminders of "Star Wars." The fact that he has to read them is a reminder that in 1977 ...

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