The worst film ever made is not Judge Dredd, the 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle: that title goes, as everyone knows, to Jaws 4: The Revenge, in which the titular shark spontaneously explodes at the end because the screenwriters couldn’t think of a believable way to kill it. However, the deepest sense of disappointment I have ever felt about a film definitely came from Stallone’s Dredd movie, in which the 2000 AD comic’s disturbingly violent lawman was portrayed as a stupid, unfunny comic turn.
I definitely took it too personally, probably because I’d been a Dredd nerd since my early teens. I was 24 when the Stallone film came out in 1995, still young enough to be suckered in by the clever PR that preceded its release. I clearly remember the ‘style bible’ The Face running a story about the supposedly fan-faithful graffiti and other canonical set-dressing at the film shoot, and swallowing the hype unquestioningly because I was intimidated by how cool The Face was.
The Stallone film easily, effortlessly played me for a fool, and like an idiot, I shook my fist at the clouds about it for years afterwards. This is why Dredd, the 2012 film starring Karl Urban – and specifically that actor’s precision-engineered portrayal of the character as an uncaring bastard – means so much to me. When I watched it for the first time and quickly realised that its intention was to depict him as a nihilistic fascist of few words, I punched the air, metaphorically speaking. I’ve done the same on each of the dozen or so times I’ve watched it since then.
Without meaning to over-labour the point about what a whining, entitled fanboy I am about this, Stallone’s teeth-grindingly awful movie was 17 years in the rear-view mirror by 2012, but that didn’t mean it was any less painful to think about. If anything, the thought of that depiction of Dredd being cinema’s last word on the character was getting worse, year on year.
Anyone who thinks that the ‘new Dredd‘ isn’t a fantastic film can do 20 years in an iso-cube. All its ingredients are top-notch. It had a competent director in Pete Travis (Omagh, Vantage Point), a veteran screenwriter in Alex Garland (The Beach,28 Days Later), and a cast and crew of enormous skill and experience. The production companies knew what they were doing, too, with DNA Productions (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting et al) teaming up with the investors, producers and distributors IM Global and Reliance BIG Pictures.
The creative team even brought Dredd’s co-creator John Wagner on board, who had written the character on 2000 AD editor Pat Mills’ initial instruction, while the art came from the late Carlos Ezquerra. As Garland explained, Wagner was on hand to keep the dialogue true to the original, which gave the film both authenticity and, arguably, canonicity.
The plot is spot-on too, following our heavy-handed law-enfo…
