Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Better than I expected, 24 Nov 2004
This film was almost universally hated, by critics and Dredd fans alike, so I didn't get round to watching it for a long time. Dredd is one of my all time favourite comics and I didn't want to see it ruined by a bad film. WHAT'S GOOD. Sylvester Stallone is the perfect man to play Dredd. I know not everyone agrees, but just scroll up and look at the picture. The first half hour or so of the film captures the atmoshere of the comics and MegaCity 1 perfectly, and gives anyone a good idea of what the comics are like. WHAT'S BAD. The story. In short the story was not right for the character. I can understand that the film makers wanted Rico as the villain because it gives a lot of the back story as to where Dredd came from, but the way in which it was done had too many holes in it. Like the fact that Dredd has identical DNA to Fargo as well as Rico, was completely ignored. Dredd shouldn't have been sent to prison in the first place, he should have been chasing Rico round MegaCity 1. Diane Lane was very pretty, but essentially mis-cast as Judge Hershey (who's older in the comics and Dredd's superior) .As for Dredd's comedy sidekick bloke... He really DID deserve to go to prison! He was totally unneccesary - less said about him the better. The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that in the film Dredd takes his helmet off! This upset many a Dreddhead, since he NEVER takes his helmet off in the comics - even when he's standing around in his underpants. I concede this probably couldn't be easily avoided on film, and it wasn't totally gratuitous but still, on screen Stallone was Dredd until he took off the helmet. Then he was just Stallone. Overall as a film it isn't bad, it's an entertaining piece of sci-fi. If you like the film, you'll like the comics more. If you like the comics the film will leave you cold.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fun but frustrating, 2 Aug 2005
Danny Cannon's Judge Dredd is an entertaining enough sci-fi action flick, but I can't help wincing whenever I watch it. Cannon claims to be a fan of the original comic strip, which suggests that he didn't have a great deal of creative control, because plenty of liberties are taken here.
I would never have expected the makers of the movie to be 100% faithful to the comic, but some of the changes that were made were superficial and pointless, and that's what irritates me. For one thing it's set in the wrong year, the Chief Judge is inexplicably called Chief Justice, Rico is locked up in Aspen rather than Titan, the heroic Chief Judge Griffin is one of the movie's villains, while in the comic both McGruder and Silver were Chief Judges... and Silver was black! And another thing... if Rico is Dredd's clone, shouldn't they be identical??
As a movie it's okay. The dialogue is pretty awful (e.g. "I knew you'd say that"), and the acting is adequate (Stallone is fairly dire and Rob Schneider is exceptionally annoying as Fergie, but Diane Lane does well as Judge Hershey, Armand Assante is deliciously nasty as Rico and Max von Sydow adds some much-needed professionalism to proceedings). The action scenes also just-about pass muster, although the hover-bike chase fails to convince, and the climactic punch-up in the Statue of Liberty is a bit of a damp squib.
In the end though, it's all fairly entertaining nonsense. It's just a shame that when the producers decide to bring Dredd to the big screen, they didn't have the courage to do it properly - as far as I'm concerned not hiring John Wagner or Alan Grant to work on the script was a crime worthy of life in an Iso-Cube.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What's wrong with everybody?, 4 Oct 2007
I'm in a minority, I know, but I've never understood why this film was, frankly, raped upon its release and remains so to this day! I grew up reading 2000 A.D. (Delivered every Saturday to my house!) and all the elements are here. It riffs on many characters and stories from the magazine and adds a few necessary touches here and there. I was quite happy watching it back in 1995 and didn't have a problem with the variations on character or the overly comic book (read: simplistic) tone of the film. It really was how I imagined the film of Dredd to be. And considering that Danny Cannon was reading 2000 A.D. at around the same time (he sent in a picture of a Judge Dredd film!) I can fully appreciate what he's tried to do with the film. Everybody calm down. It's only a movie!
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