Judge Dredd (film)
| Judge Dredd | |
|---|---|
 Judge Dredd film poster | |
| Directed by | Danny Cannon |
| Written by | Michael De Luca, William Wisher, Jr. |
| Produced by | Charles Lippincott, Beau Marks |
| Starring | Sylvester Stallone, Diane Lane, Armand Assante, Max von Sydow, Rob Schneider |
| Cinematography | Adrian Biddle |
| Music by | Alan Silvestri |
| Distributed by | Hollywood Pictures Cinergi Pictures |
Release dates | June 30, 1995 |
Running time | 96 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$85,000,000 |
Judge Dredd is a 1995 action film directed by Danny Cannon, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Diane Lane, Rob Schneider, Armand Assante and Max von Sydow. The film is based on the Judge Dredd strip in the British comic 2000 AD.
Certain elements of the film were altered from the comic series, but it still did not find wide mainstream appeal. From the beginning the film was intended to receive a PG-13 rating. Due to excessive violence the MPAA refused to downgrade the initial R rating despite repeated appeals by the studio and Stallone. Mostly because of schedule constraints the film could not be re-cut and was released with an R rating. [citation needed]
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Sylvester Stallone | Judge Joseph Dredd |
| Diane Lane | Judge Hershey |
| Armand Assante | Rico |
| Rob Schneider | Herman Ferguson (Fergie) |
| Jürgen Prochnow | Judge Griffin |
| Max von Sydow | Chief Justice Fargo |
| Joan Chen | Ilsa Hayden |
| Joanna Miles | Judge Evelyn McGruder |
| Balthazar Getty | Olmeyer |
| Maurice Roëves | Warden Miller |
| Ian Dury | Geiger |
| Christopher Adamson | Mean Machine |
| Ewen Bremner | Junior Angel |
| Peter Marinker | Judge Esposito |
| Angus MacInnes | Judge Silver |
| Louise Delamere | Locker judge |
| Phil Smeeton | Link Angel |
| Steve Toussaint | Hunter squad leader |
| Bradley Lavelle | Chief Judge Hunter |
| James Earl Jones | Narrator (unbilled) |
| James Remar | Block Warlord (unbilled) |
| Scott Wilson | Pa Angel (unbilled) |
 | This article is written like a story. (September 2008) |
Plot
The plot for the film borrows heavily from the comic strip arc "The Day the Law Died", by John Wagner, with the role of the murde==Cast==
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Sylvester Stjhlkjhlkjhlkjhkjhlkjhlkjhlkhjhlkjhiuhiuhkjhlkjhlkjlgjfkflkhgjhgllhglljggflhglyugflglkgufkfhjgljguygfljvljhgljhjvlyuffjglfglfuygflvfufclfjglftldfgljcflxtuyfglvjhcfltdgflhjcfdltjgljhcyxlutdyfghallone | Judge Joseph Dredd |
| Diane Lane | Judge Hershey |
| Armand Assante | Rico |
| Rob Schneider | Herman Ferguson (Fergie) |
| Jürgen Prochnow | Judge Griffin |
| Max von Sydow | Chief Justice Fargo |
| Joan Chen | Ilsa Hayden |
| Joanna Miles | Judge Evelyn McGruder |
| Balthazar Getty | Olmeyer |
| Maurice Roëves | Warden Miller |
| Ian Dury | Geiger |
| Christopher Adamson | Mean Machine |
| Ewen Bremner | Junior Angel |
| Peter Marinker | Judge Esposito |
| Angus MacInnes | Judge Silver |
| Louise Delamere | Locker judge |
| Phil Smeeton | Link Angel |
| Steve Toussaint | Hunter squad leader |
| Bradley Lavelle | Chief Judge Hunter |
| James Earl Jones | Narrator (unbilled) |
| James Remar | Block Warlord (unbilled) |
| Scott Wilson | Pa Angel (unbilled) |
| This article is written like a story. (September 2008) |
red Chief Justice Goodman falling to Fargo, and aspects of Chief Justice Cal being shared between Griffin and Rico. Dredd, being framed for a crime he didn't commit, was sentenced to penal servitude and recalled events from "The Day the Law Died." The movie also adapts elements from "The Return of Rico" (the presence of Rico Dredd) and "The Judge Child Quest" (the presence of the Angel Gang, although the movie depicts the Angels as cannibalistic religious fanatics rather than the mercenaries they are in the comics).
The year is 2139. It is a future where people live in violent mega cities. The place is Mega City One, located in The Cursed Earth: a radioactive desert wasteland formerly known as the United States of America and violent "block wars" are regularly fought by citizens with machine guns.
In order to combat the rising crime rate, the Mega Cities have created special police forces known as the Street Judges, who have the power to act as judge, jury, and, if need be, executioner.
Heavily armored, trained to perfection, and equipped with highly efficient and customized weapons, the judges roam the streets and live by a very stringent code in order to prevent misuse of their powers.
One of them has become a legend. He ranks as the highest street judge and has been on the streets longer than any other judge. He is Judge Joseph Dredd (Sylvester Stallone), who has been created as part of The Janus Project, a failed genetic engineering program that was intended to create the perfect street judge.
Dredd is idolized by many of the other judges, especially the young cadets at the academy, but is also feared and is considered to be dangerous and a menace by the more conservative parts of society. News anchors have made it their business to question every step he takes.
The corrupt Chief Judge Griffin (Jurgen Prochnow) helps Rico (Armand Assante), Dredd’s psychopathic clone brother from The Janus Program, escape from prison.
A prominent TV news reporter later gets killed, and the incident is captured on video. The killer was wearing the uniform of a street judge, and wearing Dredd’s badge.
Dredd is immediately taken to court, where it also turns out that the bullet that killed the victim was clearly shot from Dredd’s lawgiver gun -- a gun locked by a device that takes and verifies a DNA sample before it allows handling and firing of the weapon. To save him, the chief justice retires to use a clause which allows the last wish of a retiring judge to be honored, thereby reducing Dredd's sentence from death to life imprisonment.
Sentenced to life behind bars at an Aspen Penal Colony, Dredd's transport plane is shot down en route to the prison by a family of Cursed Earth mutants, providing him with an opportunity to escape. There, he meets the ex-chief justice who, by tradition, is supposed to go to the cursed earth once they have retired. He tells Dredd about the Janus project-that Dredd himself is a clone as a result of a quest to make the perfect judge, and that Rico was an unfortunate outcome of the same experiment. Having heard this, Dredd decides to go back to the city and save it from Rico.
It turns out that as part of an elaborate plot to reactivate the long-dormant Janus project, Griffin had Rico frame Dredd for the murder. Griffin made Rico increase the crime rate thereby making the other judges rethink and reactivate the Janus project which had been shelved until now.
Dredd must make his way back to Mega City One to prevent Griffin and Rico from creating an army of cloned super-criminals. Rico takes control, kills Griffin and makes clones of himself to make an army. Dredd gets into the city through an incinerator exhaust and hunts down Rico and kills him by throwing him off the building. Later everybody comes to know of the==Cast==
| This article is written like a story. (September 2008) |
Janus project and Dredd is reinstated as the judge and rides off after denying an offered position to be a new Chief Justice, stating that his place was on the streets.
Cast
| This article is written like a story. (September 2008) |
Cast
| This article is written like a story. (September 2008) |
Cast
| This article is written like a story. (September 2008) |
fun. What I learned out of that experience was that we shouldn't have tried to make it Hamlet; it's more Hamlet and Eggs...[1]}}
Music
Film composer David Arnold was originally set to score the film, having collaborated with director Danny Cannon on his previous film, The Young Americans. Eventually, Arnold was replaced by film composing veteran Jerry Goldsmith, but as post-production dates fell further and further behind, Goldsmith was forced to drop out of the project as well, due to prior commitments to score other films (First Knight and Congo). In the end, Alan Silvestri was selected as the new composer and would go on to score the final film.
The song "Judge Yr'self" by the Manic Street Preachers was originally going to be on the soundtrack. Their guitarist Richey Edwards disappeared in early 1995, and since the song was the last written with him in the band, it never made it to the final soundtrack listing. The song was not released until 2003.
THIS MOVIE IS BAD FUCKIN ASS
Trailer music
Although his association with the project was brief, Jerry Goldsmith still managed to compose and record an original piece of trailer music for the film. The music was most notably featured in the film's initial teaser trailer, which was comprised solely of Goldsmith's music (with the exception of a short opening quotation by the film's narrator James Earl Jones) set to a montage of footage from the film. Subsequent trailers in the Judge Dredd's advertising campaign re-used the trailer music in various edited forms. The piece has remained popular over time, as the music has seen continued use in various other movie trailers (Lost in Space, The Phantom, Inspector Gadget, Paycheck) with re-recordings featured on several film music compilation albums (Hollywood '95 featuring Joel McNeely conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Trailer Project: Coming Soon - Previews of Coming Attractions by John Beal).
Trivia
| This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (May 2008) |
- The futuristic taxis used in the film are actually Land Rover 101 Forward Control vehicles (a British Army Gun Tractor from the 1970s & '80s) with a new fibre-glass body shell designed by David Woodhouse. 31 driveable vehicles were built for the film.[2]
Further reading
- The Making of Judge Dredd (by Jane Killick, David Chute and, Charles M. Lippincott, 192 pages, Hyperion Books, 1995, ISBN 0786881062)
- Knowing Audiences: "Judge Dredd" - Its Friends, Fan and Foes (by Martin Barker and Kate Brooks, 256 pages, University of Luton Press, 1998, ISBN 1860205496)
Notes
- ^ Sylvester Stallone interviewed in Uncut #131 (April 2008), p.118
- ^ Judge Dredd
References
- Judge Dredd at IMDb
- Judge Dredd at AllMovie