Dredd is a kinetic, hyper-violent video game of a movie. So it should have no problem finding favour among fans of kinetic hyper-violent video games, of which there are plenty.



There are also plenty of Judge Dredd fans who will be more than satisfied with the lawman’s latest cinematic outing, particularly those burned by the 1995 version starring Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schnieder. This time around, there’s no comic relief in sight; the movie is as unrelenting as the protagonist at its centre.

Dredd was filmed in Cape Town and director Pete Travis makes ingenious use of what was obviously a fairly limited budget by comic-book blockbuster standards. The action is largely limited to a single massive apartment building in Mega-City One; when Dredd (Karl Urban) and a rookie Judge (played by former indie darling Olivia Thrilby) find themselves trapped in the block and targeted by a vicious gang, they must fight their way to the top floor by floor in order to take out the gang leader (Lena Heady) and end the lockdown.

Plenty of slow-motion is deployed in service of Dredd’s ultra-violent brand of justice; the depiction is borderline fetishistic, particularly the repeated slow-mo close-ups of bullets entering or exiting human bodies. Reverence for the Judge’s weaponry is clearly on display and their   

Urban delivers an impressively imposing performance as Dredd, while Thrilby, who seems to have a good bead on the inherent vulnerability of her character, does a good job of bringing humanity to the Judges. But not too much. Judge Dredd is ultimately a killing machine, and Travis, working off a script penned by The Beach screenwriter Alex Garland with input Judge Dredd creator John Wagner, delights in letting him do his thing.



Dredd opens in cinemas in South Africa on Friday, 28 September. Stay tuned to DStv.com for an interview with Karl Urban, who plays Judge Dredd in the movie.