Judge Dredd (1995)

Saw the 1995 version of Judge Dredd. I'm unfamiliar with the Judge Dredd character but sort of thought that, as a paragon of law and order, he was kind of a fascist. I was therefore confused that he was the hero (and not an anti-hero either!) It turns out they play this trick of making a fascist hero by making him the least egocentric fascist in the room, so we side with him by default. Probably-mistaken accusations of fascism aside, the film is mainly amazingly silly fun. Stallone sneers and does that weird thing with his lip when he shouts "I AM THE LLLUUAWA!" and is generally goofy. It's hilarious and fun.

The film's futuristic aesthetic borrows from the busy, industrial look of Blade Runner and the Star Wars films. The plot revolves around a future city where crime is only barely held in check by roving gangs of cop/judges who pass sentence on arrest. This is, obviously, a fantastically bad idea which is only supported in-film by the massive amounts of chaos that the city-state seems to exist in. Strangely, the antagonist is this dude who wants to mass produce super-cops. Surely this is exactly what the city-state needs. Why is he an antagonist? The bad guy is overacting-ly, scenery-chewing-ly evil though, so we're clearly meant to hate him. I think the audience is not expected to think too much about the ideologies at work here (or again, what is more likely, I am so far away from this law-n-order mindset that, flattened by distance, everything over there just looks like fascism to me. I'm on shaky ground here.)

There's some annoying action-movie quirks that the film has. There's a motor-mouthed "comic" relief sidekick who I hated. Dredd has a completely unnecessary love interest (okay, it kinda fits into themes of being more "human," but this shorthand of love being the ultimate symbol of all that's good is pretty lazy.) A female scientist suddenly joins forces with the bad guy for little to no reason. The actual reason, of course, is so that when the guys are fighting at the climax, the girls can have a mini cat-fight, but they never give her character an actual, rational reason for doing it.

All in all, a ridiculous summer flick. It's a product of its time but holds up pretty well. The film is pretty cheesy, but it's kind of campily aware of its cheesiness and silly movies are fun once in a while, so dig in. A perfectly fine film, just don't kid yourself that Judge Dredd is anything other than a pulp hero (not that you would.)