--Judge Dredd, Dredd
"Sooner or later the Justice Department is going to come through the blast doors looking for their judges. They'll find their bodies all shot up. One on level 25, one in the slo-mo den. Just a bust that went wrong. That means no torture. No raping, no skinning. Just a bunch of bullets to the head and chest."
--Madeline Madrigal, Dredd
Dredd is yet another unapologetically R-rated work of fiction from the past decade that is incredibly relevant to modern times thanks to its themes. Not once does it sacrifice its thematic foundation, which explores the nature of legal prescriptions and militarized police, to tell a story set in a very well-realized hellscape of a future America. In the same way, never does it sacrifice its artistic integrity to make a philosophical point. The film's world of mutant powers like telepathy and open, regular combat between a militarized police force and a host of criminals unite both of these aspects into a final product that makes few to no true missteps. Whatever the reason(s), Dredd did not make enough of a financial splash to lead to a major franchise, though this is not because the movie itself is not strong enough to launch a series of science fiction action films that would show that Marvel and DC do not have the only comics that can be cinematically adapted with great results.
Production Values
The world of Dredd, with all of its desperation and chaos, gets portrayed through excellent sets and mostly superb effects that make Mega City One seem far more grounded, physically real, and consistently structured than the sets of many other contemporary films. The increasing reliance on enormous amounts of CGI in modern cinema, which can either benefit a movie or hinder it depending on the individual movie in question, makes Dredd all the more retrospectively unique for its more generally realistic visuals that forgo relentless CGI of an obvious kind. Its action benefits from this more overtly realistic presentation, even during scenes of extreme destruction like when Ma-Ma's mounted guns tear through an entire level of a massive apartment tower.
Karl Urban is right at home as a "Judge" in this dystopian America. His character and performance drive the movie, all without him ever showing his full face that has become so iconic thanks to The Lord of the Rings and The Boys. Dredd himself is a philosophically incompetent character who epistemologically conflates arbitrary human laws and punishments with justice, but the performance is exactly what it needed to be to convey Dredd's resolve and intense but quiet personality. Olivia Thirlby's Judge Cassandra Anderson, a rookie who is barely accepted as a Judge, comes alongside Dredd so he can assess her skills, is likewise excellently acted. Thirlby gets the chance to show her face and emphasize emotions that distinguish her from Urban. Of course, Lena Heady, Cersei Lannister herself, brings a strong presence of her own as the sadistic, egoistic villain Madeline Madrigal who authorizes savagery like forcing people to take a drug that dramatically slows their perception of time, skinning them, and tossing them off a very high balcony. This trio, surrounded by fitting performances from side characters, is the heart of Dredd.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
In the society that follows a vaguely described war that led to the creation of megacities with "cursed earth" beyond their borders, a class of elite police officers called Judges war with near-endless crime waves. A potential Judge's field test becomes complicated when she and her partner, Judge Dredd, arrest one of gang leader Madeline Madrigal's key subordinates. Madeline locks down the entire massive apartment skyscraper with metallic sliding barriers blocking all side windows and entryways, announcing over an intercom that she will not lift them until both Judges are dead. She promises to kill anyone found helping them and their entire families. Dredd and Anderson, the potential Judge he is overseeing, must use everything from their standard weapons to the latter's unique psychic abilities (she is called a "mutant") to survive, resist Madeline Madrigal's cruelty, and enforce a legal system that is, of course, arbitrary.
Intellectual Content
Judge Dredd gives no indication that he thinks anything about moral epistemology and grounding beyond believing that legal power makes laws just and obligatory. Because of this, he threatens someone with imprisonment for vagrancy, or homelessness. He kills and arrests people over use of narcotics, but he still gives Ma-Ma a taste of slo-mo before he throws her from the top of the tower, an offense she was guilty of having done to others. If use of illegal drugs is automatically evil, then he also committed an immoral act, not to mention an utterly hypocritical one, in the name of justice. Dredd also physically assaults a prisoner to gain information, acting as if utilitarianism is true and the ends justify the means, but effectiveness and success at reaching a goal are not what make something morally good, or even permissible. The truth is that Dredd is neither rational nor just, as he has epistemological faith in the social construct of a human legal system instead of rationalistically contemplating moral obligations as either nonexistent or objective. He is irrational and a hypocrite who is willing to commit some of the very acts he condemns as universally evil if others carried them out.
Even so, he is naive enough to think he is actually avoiding epistemological errors. "Can't execute a perp on 99%," says Dredd in response to someone else, as if it is possible to come anywhere near proving that the past has even existed for longer than a moment or that an alien or demon did not take someone's appearance to commit a crime. Absolute certainty about a matter of criminal investigation is unattainable outside of grasping objective logical possibilities, the limited evidences and what they seem to point to, and what would logically follow if certain events happened. Statements like this reveal that he is thoroughly irrational on many levels and simply makes assumptions that he believes to be authoritative, though they amount to nothing but conscience, arbitrary human laws, or preferences and other perceptions. Dredd's partner Cassandra Anderson actually has access to more epistemological perceptions than him as a psychic mutant. She can see into other minds. The psychic abilities of Cassandra blend well with the realism, but she uses them in ways that undermine Dredd's worldview, such as by seeing that the hacker that locked them in the tower was forced by Ma-Ma and that justice is not treating him as if he voluntarily participated in any abductions, lockdowns, drug trafficking, or murders. Again, Dredd is not just, nor is he rational; he merely acts in accordance with legal dictates he assumes are valid.
Conclusion
Rarely is a reboot as superior to the original film as Dredd is to Sylvester Stallone's 1995 Judge Dredd. Watching it now, Karl Urban's version seems all the more distinct in a decade of forced humor in movies, which undercuts the thematic and dramatic impact of plenty of films. More importantly, it does not only have uniqueness; it has genuine quality in its performances, worldbuilding, commitment to grittiness, and philosophical underpinnings. Yes, some things could have been handled better to make it more aesthetically coherent, such as the coloring of some of the slow-motion sequences. Beyond minor things like this, so much gets handled well in plot-relevant, character-driven, thematically clever ways that Dredd stands as one of the best movies of its genre from the past two or three decades.
Content:
1. Violence: Early on, Dredd fires a "hotshot" round into a criminal's mouth when he refuses to release a hostage," burning his head from the inside out. Other scenes show bloody gunfights up close. One even shows Judge Anderson blow a man's skull apart using upward shots. Ma-Ma and her cruel subordinates talk about raping and skinning people, but this is never shown.
2. Profanity: "Bitch" and variations of "damn," "shit," and "fuck" get thrown around in dialogue.
3. Nudity: A woman's breasts are visible in the background during a Judge raid on a group of drug users with weapons.
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