Judge Dredd. - movie reviews

National Review, August 14, 1995 by John Simon

WHY the fascination with comic strips as material for movie adaptations? One can see making films from art forms of equal standing -- fiction, drama -- though even these seldom work out; but why adapt beneath your station? Because comic strips, no laughing matter, have an enormous following, and people want to see how four frames per day translate into 24 frames per second.

And so we have Judge Dredd, based on a popular British strip, and filmed in England and Iceland. We are in the Third Millennium, when "the world changed. Climate. Nations. All were in upheaval. Humanity itself turned as violent as the planet." How violent is that? I thought that planets were well-behaved, and only man was vile. But never mind: why shouldn't most of the United States be a vast desert called Cursed Earth, where "nothing grows, inhabited by marauders, scavengers, and outcasts" from the three Mega-Cities in which the population is concentrated? Perhaps because even marauders, scavengers, and outcasts have to eat, and how are they to manage that where nothing grows? But never mind: mind is never what comic strips are about.

Mega-City One, quondam New York, is a place where Block Wars among gangs are the chief game in town, which is what happens when 65 million are crowded into a walled city only mega enough for 20 million. To govern this urban wilderness, there are Judges, some of whom sit in council, while others, in robotic uniforms, roam the city, pronounce instant sentences, and are empowered to execute them. Under the circumstances, the Council Judges seem somewhat redundant, but never mind. Most feared and honored among the Street Judges is Joseph Dredd, who careens about on a law-master cycle, which boasts a micro-computer, and two auto-cannons, and which coincidentally also flies. His weapon is a voice-activated handgun with seven kinds of ammunition, the Lawgiver, DNA-coded to a particular Judge and unusable by anyone else.

Other Judges of interest include Chief Judge Fargo, Dredd's protector, wise and worthy enough to be played by Max von Sydow, the epitome of cinematic wisdom and worthiness. Also Judge Griffin, played by the German actor Jurgen Prochnow, his accent proof of his villainy. Further, Judge Hershey (an excellent name for the bar), played by the charming Diane Lane. She is secretly in love with Dredd, who, however, can't be bothered to waste feeling on anything other than the law.

An escaped convict, Rico, who bears a disturbing resemblance to Dredd (at least in the script, though not so much on screen) commits a couple of murders as a first step to becoming Ruler of the City. With the help of his accomplice, Judge Griffin, he gets the innocent Dredd convicted of them and sent to a remote penal colony. For self-sacrificial reasons too complicated to explain, Chief Justice Fargo (Wells Fargo or far to go?) is turned out into the wilderness, no doubt to bring justice for the marauders, outlaws, and scavengers to subsist on. Judge Hershey, who unsuccessfully defended Dredd at his rigged trial, is heartbroken. And that's only the beginning, folks, but you get the picture -- in both senses.

While wearing his dark helmet that hides most of his face, and his black metallic armor, Dredd has that cozily familiar Darth Vaderish look; only when he doffs the helmet and becomes Sylvester Stallone does he assume unpleasantly robotic qualities. Yet as the computer-generated world of chock-a-block superskyscrapers zoomed through by flymobiles swirls and buzzes around us, we get to depend more and more on Stallone's face as an oasis of restful impassivity. Dredd hooks up with a comic nincompoop, played by Rob Schneider, someone for the nerdier viewers to identify themselves with. And this is all I will tell you, except that, if decibels were stars, Judge Dredd would be the Milky Way.

Such as it is, though, it has an old-fashioned story line and remains superior to the third in the Chiroptera series, Batman Forever, an eternity previously arrogated only by the musical Cats; but what is sauce for the cat is, no doubt, sauce for the bat. Batman Forever achieves what other comic-book adaptations have long vainly striven for: the condition of total, seamless nonsense -- in terms of penetrability, absolute zero.

Capitalizing on its hermetic mindlessness, Batman Forever has already out-grossed (in more ways than one) the two previous Batman pictures. But there are also other innovations. Whereas the previous director was Tim Burton, the current one is Joel Schumacher, a greater vulgarian. Whereas the previous protagonist was Michael Keaton, the new one is Val Kilmer, who seems less at ease in the Batman suit and role. The suit, by the way, has been redesigned -- there are fashions in everything. So, too, the car: you can't expect a snazzy avenger to drive around in a Model T Batmobile.

In his other identity, Batman is the tycoon Bruce Wayne (double personae are popular in comics, e.g., Superman and Clark Kent) and has a trusty butler who, in the gentlemanly hands of Michael Gough, is the perfect Batman's batman. Nicole Kidman plays the love interest, the criminal pathologist Dr. Chase Meridian, in a way far too apathetic for a pathologist, though, otherwise, her performance is criminal enough. Batmans -- or is it Batmen? -- thrive largely on their villains, and this one serves up two. Tommy Lee Jones is Two-Face, a formerly honest D.A. turned vicious when half his face was burned, and he manages to overact equally from both profiles. Jim Carrey, as the campy menace, the Riddler, and a nerdy technocrat, E. Nygma, gets two separate personae (the double identity again) to go bananas with.