Super Movies! The one with Sylvester Stallone

 

Title: Judge Dredd

What Year?: 1995

Classification: Runnerup/ Evil Twin

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been continuing to debate whether to let this feature follow the others of my original 3 into retirement. That has brought me to the question not just of how much I would still want to do, but how likely it is that anything I haven’t thought of would present itself for inclusion here. It so happened that in the lead-up to this review, I had a case in point fall in my lap. It’s a movie that I had seen and given some consideration, but probably wouldn’t have gotten back to if I hadn’t discovered it available for free during a stretch of spare time. That in itself should be enough of an introduction to the movie itself, a very odd film that never quite reached obscurity or infamy, which happens to have ties to my previous review. I present Judge Dredd, the authorized adaptation of a comic that sued the makers of Hardware.

Our story begins with a standard text crawl introducing us to the world of the “third millennium”, where most of the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland while most of the human population has crowded into enormous city-states. In short order, we meet the Judges, heavily armed enforcers with the means and authority to punish evildoers, with their most distinguished member being Dredd. During the first altercation, Dredd meets a newcomer lady cop named Barbara and Herman, a hapless ex-con who quickly ends up busted again when a band of lawbreakers hole up in his apartment. Meanwhile, a mysterious escaped convict is conspiring with the petty officials of the city to seize greater power than they already have with some long-shelved projects. When the escapee murders two officials with a Judge’s self-arming gun, Dredd is quickly convicted of the crime and sent into exile, where he is stranded in the wastes along with Herman. It’s up to the unlikely pair to make their way back into the city, while the Judges are decimated by an adversary from Dredd’s own past. Can the Judge restore order? And what will be the price?

Judge Dredd was a 1995 sci fi/ action film from Hollywood Pictures, based on characters first featured in the comic 2000 AD. The film was directed by Danny Cannon from a script by William de Souza and Terminator cowriter William Wisher. Sylvester Stallone was cast in the lead role, following successful appearances in Demolition Man and Cliffhanger, with Diane Lane as Barbara, Armand Assante as the villain Rico, and Rob Schneider as Hermann.  The soundtrack was written by Alan Silvestri, known for Back to the Future and Predator (see also… Mac And Me?), after attempts to recruit Jerry Goldsmith fell through. The finished film was distributed in the US by Buena Vista. It struggled at the box office, ultimately earning $113 million against a budget of up to $90M. The film also failed to find “cult” success of otherwise comparable films, including Demolition Man. In 2012, an independent adaptation Dredd was released, featuring Karl Urban and Lena Headey, which many reviewers have preferred for quality and faithfulness to the comic.

For my experiences, what stands out in my memory is that the present film came out at the retrospective peak of the 1990s superhero movie wave, about the same time as Batman Forever, which we really, honestly liked at the time.  The collapse that followed is invariably blamed on Batman And Robin, but on consideration, the present movie did plenty of harm. It’s all the more telling that it had less immediate success and long-term influence  than works with less direct connections to the source material, including not only Hardware but Robocop. Meanwhile, when I did first look at this one, it was around the same time I looked at the 2012 movie, which I considered a little too late and simply too different to compare here. Then for the present review, I watched it first in a binge with other material I was reviewing, then again to adhere to my own rules after it became clear I wasn’t getting this done on the original timetable. My reaction at every turn could be the words on my tombstone: Not bad… but…

Moving forward, all the pros come from the well-realized world, which by all means includes the ensemble cast. To begin with, we have an impressive range of settings and environments with characters who are well-matched to them. The most impressive is a detour to the “cursed earth”, where we meet a clan of cyberpunk rednecks complete with an amped-up bruiser with a dial for his modified brain. Close behind is the lab where the finale takes place, stereotypically but effectively white and brightly lit and inhabited by a subtly fearsome scientist. There’s further nice touches with the tech, such as the self-protecting, voice-activated guns, a malfunctioning bike, and the not-quite-comical killer robot. The one thing arguably missing, and the one point I will draw comparison to the 2012 version, is that there are few if any scenes or situations that create a sense of claustrophobia. As a result, the most harrowing possibilities of arcology turned dystopia- criminals and rebels hunkered down in their own apartments, against authorities who control every exit and the utilities- are only explored in the later treatment.

The cons come in for me when I compare it to Demolition Man, something I find much more applicable than any other work to rise from the comics. This also figured directly in my classification; I could count it a “runnerup” to any number of movies, but it is to Demolition Man that I find it a true Evil Twin. I don’t suggest that one influenced the other- the whole point of the Runnerup category is that coincidences do happen- but there is more than enough for comparisons that are almost entirely unfavorable. The instructive contrast is that, outside of a few good one-liners (my favorite, “They got roasted… but the theory is sound…”), the present movie is strangely devoid of humor, even of the “unintentional” variety. Then the common denominator is the presence of Stallone, yet here it is night and day. If there was one thing Demolition Man did right, it was providing Stallone with a nuanced and often vulnerable character. Dredd, on the other hand, rarely if ever manifests emotional depth beyond his fanatical dedication to the law, and ultimately comes out virtually where he started. The strangest part is that Stallone seems to rub off on his costars, especially Assante, who seems to deliberately mimic his delivery, perhaps to foreshadow certain developments, but also with an unpleasant suggestion of mockery.

That already brings me to the “one scene”, and I’m going with one I didn’t really notice until the second viewing for this review. After an opening shootout in Hermann’s apartment (by far the most effective action sequence), Dredd wanders down the corridor with Barbara. They encounter a bot we have already sighted once or twice, an unthreatening nonanthropomorphic mech that mostly rolls along announcing the virtues of “recycled food”. (I’m definitely glad that wasn’t explained any further…) Suddenly, the judge blocks the robot’s path. There’s a surreal clash of personalities between the pair, as Dredd solemnly recites his warning to prepare to be judged, while the bot gives an officious warning that he is obstructing its state-sanctioned duties. The funny thing is, I really didn’t remember exactly how this scene goes, even in the extra viewing, and you can absolutely believe the character would shoot a completely harmless mech for some imagined offense. Instead, he finally pulls open the carapace, for a payoff just a little too good to reveal. It’s by no means atypical for the movie, but still a little better that the movie as a whole ever gets, just another disappointing glimpse of what might have been.

In closing, what I find myself reflecting on is the real nature and shape of the late 1980s-90s superhero “boom”, or boomlet. There’s a case to be made that it was Robocop as much as Batman that started the wave, and one can certainly further consider Judge Dredd as a symptom if not the cause of its end. In full hindsight, the successes of the Batman franchise never benefited anyone but the makers of Batman movies, yet even the illusion of a profitable trend was enough to sustain the ecosystem of superhero movies for a while. On the darker side, there can be no doubt that if Batman And Robin hadn’t burst the bubble, it would have burst nonetheless. (Perhaps, at least, Mystery Men would have made its money back.) The deeper lesson is that while nothing lasts forever, very few things entirely die, either, and that makes my choice perhaps more apt than I planned. If the future of the superhero genre seems uncertain now, history says we have been through worse before. And with that, I’m done.