Judge Dredd (1995)

Last summer an adaptation of comic strip antihero Judge Dredd lasted about five minutes in theaters despite good reviews. One imagines it was tainted by association with Dredd's previous screen endeavor.

Judge Dredd (1995) is every bit as bad as you've heard. Director Danny Cannon transforms John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra's satirical creation into a painfully routine Sylvester Stallone vehicle. The movie has moments of camp fun, but it's mostly paint-by-numbers.

Joseph Dredd (Sylvester Stallone) is an elite judge in futuristic Mega-City One, given the power to summarily enforce the law. Dredd's recklessness worries both Chief Justice Fargo (Max Von Sydow) and sidekick Hershey (Diane Lane). After Dredd's brother Rico (Armand Assante) breaks out of jail he frames Dredd for the murder of a journalist. Dredd gets drummed out of the judges while Rico and crooked Judge Griffith (Jurgen Prochnow) scheme to restart the Janus project, creating an army of cloned Judges. Joined by wisecracking convict Fergie (Rob Schneider), Dredd escapes prison and returns to set things right.

Judge Dredd, the comic series, originated in 1977 as a strip in the anthology 2000 A.D. Joseph Dredd became one of Britain's best-known comic book heroes, a vicious deconstruction of the Hollywood action hero. Dredd has super-legal powers to arrest, "judge" and execute suspected criminals. The loose cannon antics of Harry Callahan or Paul Kersey become overt fascism, to a point where even Dredd doubts the system's righteousness.

Logically, Hollywood transformed this dark satire into a heroic shoot-'em-up. Dredd kills people but his main crime is lacking the emotion to connect with Judge Hershey. The Judge system is criticized only insofar as bad guys like Rico and Griffith subvert it. The movie carries over the idea of Dredd and Rico as a "split personality," law as righteous and repressive, respectively. But this intriguing subtext gets lost amidst endless action, shameless scenery chewing and painful Rob Schneider gags.

From a box office standpoint this dumbing-down is understandable, and if Dredd were Lethal Weapon I'd be more forgiving. Given the movie's ostensible pedigree however, it's hard to swallow. Like a warped inversion of Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, Dredd turns a pointed anti-conservative text into a celebration of vigilantism. Call me a hand-wringing liberal, but Dredd becoming a slightly nicer Brownshirt doesn’t seem like a happy ending.

Dredd doesn't offer much else. Cannon keeps things moving briskly but the action scenes are forgettable. Most memorable is Rico's robot henchman, who manages more personality than his human co-stars. There's lots of faux-Blade Runner future imagery that, if not inventive, at least avoids the gaucherie of Joel Schumacher's Batman films. That's qualified praise indeed with Alan Silvestri providing the score… But mostly Dredd isn't painfully bad, just dull.

Sylvester Stallone weathered an abominable patch of films between Rocky III and Cop Land; even Stallone's most avid fans won't defend Cobra or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Predictably, Sly plays Dredd as a bellowing, unemotive, mass murdering meathead. It's bizarre watching Stallone scream "I am the law!" and related outbursts without a fleck of emotion. If Dredd had an ounce of cleverness I might consider Stallone's turn self-parody.

Apparently Sly was determined not to be the film's worst actor, casting two abominable co-stars. Armand Assante gives a villain turn of outstanding awfulness. Assante can be good but not while screeching LAAAAAAAAAW! with spittle gushing from his gnarly maw. I guess 48 Hrs. made action movie sidekicks mandatory, but why must we endure Rob Schneider? It's like having Adam Sandler hang out with The Terminator.

The supporting cast emerges unscathed. Diane Lane is a fetching sidekick though Hershey remains strictly one-dimensional. Max Von Sydow, Joan Chen, Jurgen Prochow, Scott Wilson and Maurice Roeves deserve medals for handling throwaway roles with uncommon skill. Indeed, Von Sydow makes Fargo's disgrace almost poignant.

But even the star of The Seventh Seal can't save Judge Dredd. More than anything else it's boring, and that's one failing Groggy can't abide.