They call him Judge, his last name is Dredd,
So break the law, and you may wind up dead.
Truth and justice are what he’s fighting for,
Judge Dredd the man, he is the law.
 -- Anthrax, "I am the Law"

Like the musical narrative whittled in times past by Anthrax, the year nineteen hundred and ninety-five brought into existence cinema’s own take on 2000 AD’s most famous creation. The time was of buzzing anticipation: the sheen of helmet visors threatened to furrow into the social edifice like a knife lacerating cake, throwing into disarray convention and morbid inertia alike, fucking a decelerating conception of artistic expression into motion.

A pioneering force was to be unleashed, let loose into the labyrinthine mines of the human psyche. The rising tide of orgasmic exhilaration reached crescendo heights upon the birth pangs of the film’s release, stabbings puncturing the accepted distinction between the myriad stages of production and the time spent straddling the irate hornet disposition of the box office.

Then it was splashed out into the world, soaked in amniotic bullets of ultra-violence, umbilical blows to the crotch in abundance. The masses cowered, unable to form the correct mien with which to address the rich numinosity of Judge Dredd. To acquiesce to the comic gyrations or to turn away in disgust, that was the question. Shot through the filament of the beating heart strings running transnationally across space, the film was subject to opal eyes and pale pregnant minds, sundering tedium parasitic on the social conscience. Never before had intact follies been redeemed with such gusto. Judge Dredd stole nobility from the arbitrary, redistributing to the meritorious deserved rewards.

How an inventory majestic in colour such as thus could have been perpetrated by a mere assemblage of images laced with sound is the beautiful centrepiece of this story. For imprisoned in the vulgarity of celluloid reproduction is a vivid set of pronouncements palatial in form, oozing their yield through a singular source, the fecund presence of Sylvester Stallone.

Shouldering Judge Dredd’s humming weight of disdain, Stallone is the fulcrum to this rocking web of explosions and titanic shouting. He is cast into the riotous crackles of Mega City One, a grim collective of wretched lawbreakers that makes Mos Eisley look like a port of saints. His job: uphold juridical integrity and punish those who would dare deface the rule of law. Felons are subject to judging on the spot, verdicts conjured by whichever Judge they are unlucky to be caught by. Of these civil enforcers, the most notorious and rigid of temperament is Judge Dredd. Whereas lesser Judges may grant lenience on occasion, overlooking minor misdeeds in a bout of discretion, Judge Dredd’s obligation to the profession pierces any and all merciful cries.

But duty is soon rescinded when a base conspiracy framing Dredd for the murder of innocents leads to him condemned to life imprisonment. With the system fissuring under corruption, it’s up to our eponymous hero to rip apart the shackles of the sentence dealt him and rescue Mega City One from the clutches of vile Rico and his lust for domination.