I can’t write this review without focusing on Karl Urban, who has previously stood out for his excellent turn as Dr McCoy in the Star Trek revival.

Obviously there’s a bit more to it than that, but this is the basic set up and it works very well indeed, allowing for plenty of violence, some character development and no few explosions. A routine triple homicide (it’s that sort of city) turns into a siege when they are trapped in a massive tower block by criminal nutjob Ma Ma (Lena Headey) and forced to fight their way out and stop her manufacturing the addictive new drug, Slo Mo. Dredd is accompanied on patrol by rookie Judge Anderson, very well played by Olivia Thirlby, who is on the verge of failing her final assessment but is being given a second chance because of her powerful, and rare, psi abilities. The premise is reasonably simple, something that works well as an introduction to what is, in the comics at least, a sprawling future world. Director Pete Travis (Endgame) does an excellent job, and between them they have turned in a film that will stand the test of time as a superior, adult action movie. Filmed in South Africa on what passes for a tight budget these days (especially for Sci-Fi), it could be compared to District 9 in terms of the sheer effort put into it, with a result that is similarly impressive although aesthetically miles apart. The film is written by long time fan Alex Garland (28 Days later, Sunshine), and has had plenty of input from Dredd’s creator (and still main writer even now) John Wagner. This, people, is as thin as the blue line gets. It’s quite the scumhole, and the only thing that stands between it and total chaos are the Judges, trained for years to be the ultimate in law enforcement, yet so outnumbered they can only handle 6% of the crimes committed.

The time is the future, and amidst the wasteland that is America there is a single, massive city with 800 million inhabitants, appropriately called Mega City One. He is, as he is fond of stating, the law. The character of Judge Dredd, now entering his 35th year in UK comic 2000AD (they know it’s 2012 – don’t ask), isn’t a complicated one. The basic aim of Dredd is simple – it needs to be bold, true to the source material and full of juicy violence, enough to wipe out the memories of the notoriously poor Stallone attempt of 1995 that threw plenty of money at the screen without bothering to work on anything resembling a decent script.

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