JUDGE DREDD

JUDGE DREDD. Danny Cannon, dir. USA: Hollywood Pictures, 1995. Sylvester Stalone, star. Based on the British comic books.

Features a heavy-metal, postmodern, cyberpunkish cyborg, atmosperic shuttle-craft, and robot, plus modernist guns and motorcycles. The mise en scène combines cyberpunk with modernist, with the Megacity appearing at times something like [[METROPOLIS (film) (q.v.) colored in with a comic-book palatte. In addition to the City, there is a Waste Land desert (hot) and a Prison at Aspen, CO (cold); the more civilized locales feature images of the men and a few women, including cops and clones, trapped in machines or encased in body armor; the cyborg is a creature of the Waste Land. Cover story for Cinefantastique 26.5 (August 1995). See under Graphics, J. Newsinger, "The Dredd Phenomenon." CAUTION: The happy ending has a police state not as bad as it might be but remaining firmly in place, for a rather fascistic conclusion.