5 out of 5

Director: Pete Travis

I have to restrain myself from writing this in all caps. First: please note that I am not a Dredd fan, so this isn’t bias speaking. But I’ve read enough to know the hallmarks of the character and to appreciate the appeal, and though they shift this thing to the U.S., good golly if screenwriter Alex Garland didn’t zero in on the elements of Dredd and his environment that worked best for film, good golly if director Travis didn’t piece together something that could’ve been massively over-CGI’d into something appropriately down-to-Earth feeling, etc. regarding the unbelievably awesome cinematography, ditching the stupid @#$@ color filters of most films of this type and using well-placed lighting to get that sick and dirty feel, and one thousand million points to Karl Urban for getting the sneer and attitude 100% down. Did you see the Raid? Sure, these films are similar in more ways than one – cops locked down in a building owned by a gang, said cops (Judges, in this case) working their way up section by section to down the big boss – but I don’t even care if they took the script from Raid and just wrote on top of it – Dredd was everything Raid wanted to be and more, with more consistently entertaining action and blood where Raid got repetitive, and dialogue that actually matters within the context of the film and isn’t just fake character filler. Sure, this is still a dumb action pic, and I suspect it will be a little empty for people who AREN’T expecting the essence of Dredd – which is to say unemotional, straight-faced justice – but for anyone with an appreciation for the character who knew Urban’s whispered delivery of “I am the law” was a good sign – I truly don’t think you can be disappointed. It might be missing the satire that creeps into the comic, and certainly can’t pick up on the scope of that world with its years of history – and sure, suffer some hometown pride because now he’s American – but good golly, man.