Okay, let\u2019s start with the basics.\u00a0 This is a comic book hero film.\u00a0 That\u2019s the excuse for an action movie.\u00a0 The \u201cuniverse\u201d this takes place in has a city stretching from the Boston locale to where Washington D.C. was and is called very poetically, \u201cMega-City One.\u201d\u00a0 It is walled in and surrounded by an irradiated desert.\u00a0 There must have been a nuclear war or something.\u00a0 Somehow it supports 800 million inhabitants and most of them seem to be third world refugees living awful lives surrounded by drugs, gangs and general depravity.<\/p>\n
Law and order are in the hands of the \u201cjudges.\u201d\u00a0 They are law enforcement officers who also can dispense justice as judge, jury and executioner at their own discretion.\u00a0 They ride around on motorcycles and have weapons that can dispense munitions ranging from standard bullets, to armor piercing rounds, to gas rounds to incendiary devices.\u00a0 They tend to kill a lot of criminals in the course of their work.<\/p>\n
In this story a judge named Dredd is bringing a female rookie named Cassandra Anderson on a trial assignment.\u00a0 She also happens to be a psychic.\u00a0 This seems to be linked to her parents having died from the effects of radiation.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t wear her armored helmet the way Dredd does because it interferes with her psychic ability but mostly because we wouldn\u2019t be able to see her blonde hair.<\/p>\n
The gist of the story is that Dredd and Anderson have captured a member of the Ma-Ma Madrigal gang.\u00a0 Anderson can tell that he\u2019s guilty of some recent murders so he\u2019s being brought in for interrogation.\u00a0 But Ma-Ma knows that he would end up spilling the truth about her involvement in the deadly \u201cslo-mo\u201d drug distribution.\u00a0 So, they lock down the 200-story housing complex where she resides and traps the two judges inside.\u00a0 The rest of the story is Dredd\u2019s fight to stay alive until help can arrive from outside.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n Alright, the spoiler alert is kind of silly.\u00a0 This is a comic book movie.\u00a0 Judge Dredd kills all his adversaries and ends the movie virtually the same as it begins, walking off to fight crime in Mega-City One.\u00a0 In between we meet Ma-Ma, her henchmen and a few of the hopelessly oppressed residents of Mega-City One.\u00a0 At the end of the movie Dredd approves Anderson\u2019s probationary service.\u00a0 But when she hands in her shield at the end of her probation I couldn\u2019t tell if she still wanted to do the work.\u00a0 Oh, and at the climax Dredd throws Ma-Ma Madrigal off the 200-story building to her death.\u00a0 Of course he did.<\/p>\n Alright, who is this movie for.\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s for comic book movie fans.\u00a0 I guess most action movie fans will enjoy it.\u00a0 People who don\u2019t like gratuitous gun violence probably won\u2019t.\u00a0 By and large I\u2019ll say I enjoyed it.\u00a0 It was mindless fun.\u00a0 A little crude and full of the usual vulgar language so not for kids but no harm for grownups.\u00a0 Your milage may vary.<\/p>\n