There are a few films that were released between '94 and '96 that I define as my "geek era", these films made me the geek I am today, the films I still think about and quote on an almost daily basis. Those films are No Escape (94), Tank Girl (95), Hackers (95), Bio-Dome (96) and this film, the infamous Judge Dredd.
I was somewhat familiar with the character of Judge Dredd as a younger teen but I wasn't up on the whole 2000AD comic book series as I was more into the X-Men, Superman and Batman side of the comics industry, all I knew was that he was a badass looking character who was a cop. I picked up a few of the comics at a school fair once but could never really get into the character but this film, this goddamn film, with it's OTT performances and almost cringe inducing one-liners, kind of made me appreciate the character in a different way. Lets get this one out of the way, this is not Judge Dredd, well it's not the comic version of Judge Dredd, this is Stallone's ego filled version of the character, a character he literally had no knowledge of, this is his fantastical idea of what he thinks Dredd is. For a more accurate version of the character, Id recommend checking out Karl Urban's portrayal of the character in 2012's highly underrated Dredd.
I'm not going to compare the two films in this review because, while I like Dredd '12, I absolutely fucking adore this 1995 adaptation (?) of the comic, so it would be unfair to do so without having some sort bias, so this is just a straight up review of 1995's hilarious mixed bag but also quite a lot of fun version of the eponymous character created by John Wagner and the late Carlos Ezquerra.
Judge Dredd is the numero uno cop in Mega City One, a huge walled off city comprising of 65 Million inhabitants, it's the size of New York and it's presided over by The Halls of Justice and their street cops, police officers who are Judge, Jury and Executioner, the most feared of which is our title character, Judge Joseph Dredd. The role of the Judge is to assess and dole out sentences that fit the crime from a warning to 5 years in prison for hacking robots to full on execution at the scene of the crime. Dredd is set up for murder by some shady high ranking members of the hall of justice and sentenced to life at Aspen Penal Colony. But something doesn't seem right, Dredd is a man of justice and would never betray the law. Meanwhile, former Judge Rico has escaped from prison and has acquired an ABC Robot, a war machine that will follow his every command. It turns out that Rico was the one who committed murder and set it up to look like Dredd did it. Rico is Dredd's brother, therefore they share the same DNA. There's something about cloning and it's all a bit blah blah, but I ain't watching this for some convoluted plot involving clones and shit, I wanna Stallone blow stuff up.
Yeah the plot is a bit wanky but it's relatively easy to follow. The most fun comes from watching Stallone act as the by-the-book law officer that everyone looks up to, a stark contrast to his role as John Spartan in Demolition Man only two years prior. It's cheesy as hell and when you add Rob Schneider to the mix as his comic sidekick you can see that the film really doesn't seem to take it's self as seriously as director Danny Cannon originally envisioned.
When we look at the making of the film, there's a lot to take into consideration. The film's failure seemed to fall at the feet of Stallone, who I previously mentioned had no idea of the character when he agreed to take the role. He butted heads with Danny Cannon who envisioned a violent, dark and gritty R-rated action film but, and this is a big but, the film was produced by Disney, yeah you may not have known that because there's no indication on the posters or the end credits, but what we do see is that the film was made by Hollywood Picture, yup, the same company that produced The Rock, Grosse Point Blank, A Low Down Dirty Shame, The Sixth Sense, Resident Evil and the Pauley Shore Classic, Son In Law to name but a few and guess who owned Hollywood pictures? Michael Eisner and guess who was head of Disney at the time? Michael Eisner and, you won't believe this, Hollywood Pictures was an in Studio production studio of Disney. So, Judge Dredd is essentially a Disney film, so I guess that makes Judge Hersey a Disney Princess then? , well it turns out that Disney wanted a PG-13 movie for the whole family as opposed to Cannon's idea of the R-rated action flick he originally signed on to direct and it was from a script by Steven E. De Souza, the writer most famous for 48 Hours, Commando, The Running Man and fucking DIE HARD!!!, What were they expecting?
Stallone wanted more comedy, Cannon did not. Stallone felt it was an action comedy, Cannon did not. Danny Cannon was locked out of the edit and it basically killed his directing career with only a couple of films that followed but in the wake of this, Danny Cannon has carved out a pretty cool career within Television, creating the show Pennyworth and producing everything from CSI to Gotham, so it's not all bad for him. Stallone is Stallone and we all know how his career is going.
But for all the behind the scenes issues, the film has some incredible attributes. With a budget of $90 Million, the production design, the costumes, props and practical FX are insane. Borrowing heavily from Robocop, Blade Runner, and of course taking inspiration from the actual Dredd comics, these all kind of raise the film above the standard trash factor. I just watched the film on Blu-Ray and holy shit is this film a good looking film, I've included a few screenshots below to just show how well produced the film is so the props definitely go to the production team, especially Production Designer Nigel Phelps who worked on among others, Alien Resurrection, World War Z and Pearl Hatbour and Art director Les Tomkins who's worked on everything from The Shining to Tim Burton's Batman and even Fast & Furious 6. They bring such quality to the production and it's all shot through the lens of cinematographer Adrian Biddle whose first three films were Aliens, The Princess Bride and Willow respectively. So there was some serious talent behind the scenes of the film. The Judges costumes were also designed by Gianni Versace, GIANNI VERSACE!!!
Judge Dredd also contains one of the most underrated film scores of all time by Alan Silvestri, a personal favourite of mine because he gave us the Back To The Future theme and he's recently had a bit of resurgence in popularity due to his now Iconic Avengers theme. But I seriously think his score for Judge Dredd is criminally underrated as he was brought in late into the production after David Arnold left and Jerry Goldsmith departed due to messy production delays which interfered with other commitments. Another little bit of information you might be interested in is that the film originally was to have a theme song, written and performed by Welsh rock band The Manic Street Preachers, but due to some troubles and the disappearance of guitarist Richie Edwards, They decided not stay on the project and abandoned the song. It was actually released in 2003 and it's called Judge Y'er Self.
For all the hate the film gets, there is a small minority of people who absolutely adore this film, I proudly put myself in that category. Yes the film is flawed, it's got some ropey blue/green screen FX and it comes across as childish at times and yes, Judge Dredd does have a catchphrase. But the Cast is fantastic, we have Stallone, Armand Asante pre-shit-movie-megastar, Jurgan Prochnow, Rob Schneider (ok maybe not him), Joan Chen, the gorgeous Diane Lane and the late great Max Von Sydow and we even get cameo's from Ewan Bremner pre-Trainspotting, the late Scott Wilson as Pa Angel, James Remar, Adrienne Barbeau in a voice cameo and the films opening is narrated by James Earl Jones. It does have a weak script and the plot is a bit silly but it's all good fun and I kind of feel like Judge Dredd was Danny Cannon's Alien 3 only, for him, he didn't become David Fincher in the aftermath.
For me there's a definite nostalgia factor that plays into my enjoyment, having seen the film across 4 different formats in the last 25 years, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray and Streaming and because it's a film I have continuously watched over the years, I still feel there's a little place in that 12 year me's heart for this flick. I still find it incredibly enjoyable even now as a 36 year old, much like people who find films they watched in the 70s enjoyable or the 60s, 50s etc, but I guess if you haven't seen the film in 25 years, you probably won't have the same reaction I do.
So my final verdict is a 4, yeah I know, how can I give this film a 4 when it's generally considered a bad film? Well the two and half pages I just wrote should be enough to warrant my score. If you don't like it then that's fair, if you do like it, then can we be friends? no? I knew you'd say that!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment