I am the Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future

Product Information

Dredd is riding his bike through Mega City, chasing a van that is obviously being driven by someone under the influence. The occupants are taking Slo-Mo, a new narcotic on the streets that makes time go by very slowly. (Why this would appeal to junkies, most of whom want to escape from misery, is an exercise for the viewer, unless there’s a concomitant high, though that’s not at all clear from what we see of the drug.) There’s a lot of talent in this movie, and I like that they cast both Max von Sydow and Jurgen Prochnow as supervising judges, so we didn’t know which one of them was the bad guy at first. (But it had to be one of them. I mean, it’s Max von Sydow and Jurgen Prochnow, for crying out loud, neither of these two is likely to play a good guy, and certainly both of them aren’t gonna.) Joan Chen is wasted as a scientist who works with the bad guys, who’s mostly there to give Hershey someone to fight in the climax while Dredd is facing off against Rico. Speaking of Rico, Armand Assante is also wasted in a role that literally anyone who was good at overacting could play.

We don’t get that with Dredd, which never manages to feel like it’s the future. There’s nothing in the production design that screams “awful future,” it mostly just screams “contemporary Los Angeles.” Worse, Peach Trees never once feels like it’s two hundred stories tall. The production design and look and feel never quite live up to what the script (or the source material) call for. Dredd is put on trial, with Hershey defending him. The chief justice, Fargo, who is Dredd’s mentor, doesn’t want to believe that Dredd would commit homicide, but the evidence is overwhelming. However, when a judge retires, he goes on “the long walk”—bringing justice to the Cursed Earth outside the city until he or she dies. Traditionally, a judge’s last wish before retiring is always followed, and Fargo decides to retire with his last wish is for Dredd to be judged leniently. Judge Dredd: [ pulling Fergie, by the mouth, out of the service robot he's been hiding in and slamming him against a wall] Mega City code 7592: Willful sabotage of a public droid. That's 6 months, citizen. Let's see your Unicard. Dredd takes down the van, which kills two of the occupants. He chases the third into a food court where he stops the third despite his having taken a hostage.I know I said I’d do The Mask and Son of the Mask this week, but I was in more of a Dredd mood for whatever reason. We’ll dive into the Tex Avery-esque adaptation of the Dark Horse character next week. I Am the Law" is a single by thrash metal band Anthrax, from the album, Among the Living. It is one of Anthrax's most famous songs, appearing on their best-of albums: Return of the Killer A's, Madhouse: The Very Best of Anthrax and Anthrology: No Hit Wonders (1985–1991). Citizen Ma-Ma. Your crimes are multiple homicides, and the illegal manufacture and distribution of narcotics. How do you plead? [he forces Ma-Ma to inhale Slo-Mo, and she says nothing] Defense noted. [throws her out the window to her death] Central reports a triple homicide in Peach Trees, a two-hundred-story apartment complex. The three bodies were thrown from the two-hundredth floor after being flensed. They were also high on Slo-Mo when they were tossed, so they got to really savor the experience of falling to their doom. Both Rico and Dredd were clones, created from genetic material from the finest of the judges’ council. The project, codenamed Janus, was abandoned and sealed after Rico went binky-bonkers. Now, though, Griffin wants to revive Janus so he can have perfect judges. He freed Rico from his secret imprisonment, had him impersonate Dredd to kill Hammond (Rico and Dredd have the same DNA), and for shits and giggles, he also got his hands on an old robot enforcer.

Anderson encounters another judge, but her psychic abilities reveal her intentions, and Anderson shoots her too. The remaining two corner Dredd, and even manage to wound him, but Dredd kills one, and Anderson kills the other before he can kill Dredd. They then proceed to the control room where the techie is willing to give up Ma-Ma’s location (the top floor) and the passcode to get into her stronghold (which Anderson reads psychically). Anderson lets him go free, to Dredd’s annoyance, as he’s guilty, but Anderson also saw in his mind how badly he’d suffered at Ma-Ma’s hands. And she figured she’s already failed her assessment once she got taken hostage, so in for a penny in for a pound. Unfortunately, the film was beset with difficulties, mostly the tension between Stallone and director Danny Cannon, as the former saw it as an action-comedy, while the latter viewed it as a dark satire. The film found no audience in the U.S., though it did decently overseas, not aided by the storyline breaking one of the cardinal rules of the comic strip, which is that Dredd’s face is never seen. Players of Strontium Dog may find a few familiar ideas within the core rules of Judge Dredd. This game heavily expands on those skirmish rules, however, to reflect the urban environments of Mega-City One. The Judge Dredd rulebook contains everything you need to know about playing the game and includes rules for fighting within buildings and using vehicles. As well as a number of scenarios, there are rules for developing your chosen faction in a series of linked games. Fuppie: [ smiling nervously] Uh, this is getting boring, hey... So, uh, what's the tab? Come on, how much is this gonna cost me? You name the price. Maybe some day we’ll get the perfect Judge Dredd movie that combines the production values of Judge Dredd with the script sensibilities of Dredd. These two movies’ failures don’t bode well, but then the comic book character’s still going strong after four decades, so who knows what’ll happen in another decade or two?

Total Pageviews

Judge Hershey: No. No, I don't think that's right. No one should be alone all the time. I mean, is that really what it's been like for you? Haven't you... haven't you ever had a friend? At Griffin’s urging, Rico foments more chaos, which should be enough to unseal Janus and allow Griffin to tighten the reins, as it were, with his private army of clones. Rico uses his knowledge of judge procedure and his big-ass robot to kill more than a hundred judges. This massacre, and subsequent rioting, leads the council to unseal Janus so Griffin can re-create it. Judge Dredd: You're one of the smartest of a new breed, but you've only been on the street a year. You haven't gotten used to the isolation yet.