JUDGE DREDD
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1995 Michael John Legeros
Directed by Danny Cannon
Written by William Wisher and Steven E. De Souza, from a story
by Michael De Luca and William Wisher
Cast Sylvester Stallone, Armande Assante, Diane Lane, Rob
Schneider, Jurgen Prochnow, Joan Chen, Max von Sydow
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for violence and profanity)
Running Time 96 minutes
Reviewed at Wynnsong 10, Durham (30JUN95)
==
Despite handsome casting and sharp production values, last month's second comic-book-to-film is a failure from the get-go. The tone problems start in the very first scenes, after James Earl Jones' somber narration introduces the judicial system of the future, where "judges" roam the streets of Mega-City One, acting as judge, jury, and executioner. The toughest judge is Judge Dredd (Sylvester Stallone), who's emotionless commitment to "da law" strikes fear in the hearts of evil men.
Boasting a great set-up, JUDGE DREDD sounds tougher than it really is. The screenplay--by William Wisher and Steven E. De Souza--tries to cover too many bases at once, as if someone at Disney decided that a Facist character in a graphic comic book could have some sort of mass audience appeal. So they "humanize" the movie by giving Dredd a hollow sense of humor, a female Judge/love-interest/sparring-partner (Diane Lane), and even a comic sidekick (Rob Schnieder, who obviously didn't learn *his* lesson after appearing alongside Stallone in DEMOLITION MAN).
Actually, *that* film is much more enjoyable than the wasted work here. Director Danny Cannon has visualized correctly, but the story contains too much absurdity to be taken seriously. Sci-fi hillibillies; malfunctioning motorcycles; and, yes, even a cat-fight (between Lane and Joan Chen). Sigh. The whole thing is actually not awful until the last twenty minutes, when Stone and Armande Assante (who plays the villain) are standing and shouting in each other's faces, their respectively flawed diction trying to work their mouths in the direction of north by northwest.
BOTTOM LINE: Dreadful.
Grade: D+
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews