How sad is this?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Big budget, major studio adaptation of a beloved cult sci-fi comic book takes place in a Dystopian future, where populations are crowded into massive "Mega Cities" and the main form of law enforcement consists of "Judges" - bike riding officers who are empowered to act as judge, jury, *and* executioner, all in one. The most feared and legendary of them all is Judge Joseph Dredd (Sly Stallone), who ends up framed for the murder of a crusading reporter (top character actor Mitchell Ryan). Dredd is able to escape transport to prison, uniting with a goofy low rent criminal named Fergie (Rob Schneider) and heading for an inevitable confrontation with a megalomaniac named Rico (Armand Assante, hamming it up like there's no tomorrow).It's understandable that purists will take some exception to this adaptation and greatly prefer the 2012 feature film version (starring Karl Urban as Dredd). But the 1995 "Judge Dredd" does attempt to give people their money's worth. There's lots of hard-edged action, a non-stop assortment of razzle-dazzle futuristic images (utilizing what was then cutting-edge CGI), an ominous music score by Alan Silvestri, some entertaining characters, and great costumes. The plot is nothing special, but is not hard to follow, as it centers on a conspiracy where a ruling Council tried to play God, and ended up with a mess on their hands.Sly doesn't have to stretch himself here, getting to play a rough and tough and VERY stoic man of action who thinks that having emotions is key to getting a person killed. Adding the humanity is lovely Diane Lane as a fellow Judge who proves to be completely loyal. Schneiders' comedy relief may be a matter of personal taste; although not generally appreciated, this viewer found him to be at least mildly funny and not unlikeable.The excellent supporting cast includes such luminaries as Max von Sydow, Jurgen Prochnow, Joan Chen (who's under-utilized), and Joanna Miles, with ever-wonderful von Sydow coming off the best. Other familiar faces like Ewen Bremner and Angus MacInnes turn up. Making uncredited contributions are James Earl Jones (who reads the opening narration), James Remar (as a block warlord), and 'The Walking Dead's' Scott Wilson as Pa Angel. (And that's one thing that this viewer did appreciate about this film version: the presence of the desert-dwelling, degenerate Angel family.)Overall, colourful entertainment that may indeed play like a video game, but it's certainly never boring.Six out of 10.

This film was panned pretty heavily by critics when it first came out, and like a lot of movies I've held off watching for just that reason, it turned out to be entertaining enough to have disregarded the naysayers. What you have to do perhaps, is go in with the idea that the film makers were going for camp value by putting Judge Dredd on screen, and in that regard, the picture can probably be deemed a success. Sylvester Stallone was a solid choice to portray the title character because he has that brooding, stoic look going for him, and who better to effect a character with no emotion who's only interest is in carrying out the law.Armand Assante, who portrayed Stallone's brother in 1978's "Paradise Alley", is teamed back up with him as a brother again of sorts. It's revealed that both were the experimental result of the Janus Project, a government program gone wrong and put to rest nine years earlier. Judge Dredd was the intended outcome of Janus, but Assante's Rico had a programming anomaly that made him a violent criminal. As I write this, an inconsistency in the story presents itself, in as much as Rico knew he wasn't human, whereas Dredd did not. I didn't pick up on that while watching, but it's more than evident if you think about it.The biggest surprise for this viewer that the movie had to offer was the strength of the supporting cast for what's nominally a popcorn flick promising over the top action and a requisite amount of explosives. You've got Jurgen Prochnow, Max von Sydow and Diane Lane in principal roles, no slouches when it comes to actors who've made their mark in much more prominent films. The one concession to the popcorn crowd would have been including Rob Schneider as somewhat of a comedic sidekick to the droll Judge Dredd. There were any number of times I thought Dredd might have squashed him like a bug, but in the end he served a fanboy purpose.I think I may have read all of one Judge Dredd comic book, so I don't know if humor played any part in their regular story lines, but I did find the occasional cultural references in the picture to be amusing, like the street corners of Abbott and Costello and Burns and Allen. I found Rico's comment about guilt and innocence to be a matter of timing as quite an intriguing concept, and even though the Mega-City presented in the story appeared to be entirely lawless, I found the admonition to 'Be kind to each other' played over and over again on the city's broadcast system as more than slightly ironic. However someone still needs to get back to me on the idea of 'recycled food'. What the heck would that be?

First I'd like to stress that I haven't yet read any of the original Comics, so things like Dredd taking off his mask didn't bother me as much as it would someone knowing the character.That said, the Positives: Although not particularly good the movie is still a Hollywood action film and it shows. The action is relatively good, the effects quite impressive for 1995 (expect for that flying bike chase scene), the cinematography is fine and the score while nothing spectacular well executed. Max Von Sydow being a great actor does well in his small part and Dredd's companion (I don't remember her name) is adequate. Armand Assante while not being able to be taken seriously really seems to have fun, as he cheerfully chews the scenery spouting off nonsense. One particularly great scene is when he has a shouting competition with Stallone on how to pronounce law, or as he put it: "LAW!!!"The Negatives: They decided for some reason to have a very serious plot. Instead of showing Dredd doing his Job and then an unusual problem arises and he has to take care of it alone or with a companion (like in the remake) they chose to have an "epic" confrontation between him and an Rico, where the values of their society are at stake. While it wasn't a horrible plot per say it was kind of baffling how they chose such a big and ambitious conflict for a relatively simply character. Speaking of characters let's talk about Stallone. He is quite bad. Unfortunately. You would expect he would be ideal for the character of Dredd and while he manages to do some scenes fine as well as pull off the whole "always serious" shtick he is just interesting and in some cases, over the top. For instance in the courtroom scene every time there's a close up he extenuates his chin. It's ridiculous, it's like he knows he has a good chin and wants everyone to witness it or he's doing it as joke. Speaking of jokes the comic relief is Rob Schneider. He's talent-less, unfunny, annoying and a pain in the ass both for the audience and the characters them-self. Why was he even in this? Also that ABC robot or whatever they're call looks ridiculous thank's to it's chin. You can't really be threatening with a design like that. The suit the judges wear while looks the part is too over the top and glossy for it to be realistically used in the battlefield. I would have also preferred a bit more blood. It was the 90s, you could still make money with R rated films although that's really the filmmakers fault.In the End if you are a big Stallone fun and don't mind cheesy lines and bad comic relief give it a shot. If not you can still watch it as a bad example of a comic based film.

I guess if I was a fan of the "Judge Dredd" comics, I would have disliked this more. From what I saw, it isn't really THAT bad. It's really cheesy and over the top, but it is kind of entertaining in that way. Don't get me wrong, I still wouldn't recommend this film, but it's not quite as bad as people see. I mean, a movie that pairs Rob Schneider and Sylvester Stallone is pretty much doomed to fail. There are so many ways to make this better. And wouldn't you know it? They did make it better with the new Dredd movie...even though I personally wouldn't quite recommend that either.It tells the story of Judge Dredd, who's framed for a murder by his evil brother, Rico. I guess it's hard to hate this movie, because there really is the sense that it was never intended to be anything that good. I will compliment this film on having some great settings. I mean, this film is truly beautiful to look at! These are backgrounds and sets that really hold up! It really does make me miss the designs of the mid 1990's. Yeah, Rob Schneider's quite annoying, but at least he has more serious actors to work off of, I guess. A lot of what they do is actually pretty creative and the characters are kind of colorful.It's still way too hard to take seriously. Stallone's dialogue is way too silly to care. I believe that this guy was nominated for the most Razzies. My advice is just ignore this one, but I can see how some people would consider it a guilty pleasure. I just wish we could have seen those clones fight at the end. Those last scenes had so much potential!