Yeah, it's bad. Kinda depressing.
I'm a long term Dredd fan. Having read the entire screenplay, here's my verdict with spoilers taken out. My original review had a few spoilers to help illustrate my points but I've removed them.
Lame Die Hard copy set in Dredd's world.
No imagination, no satire, no invention, cliche villains, just Die Hard in a block. It really is Die Hard in a block.
The outline suggested Dredd and Anderson have to escape with the perp but that's not the case. Kay, their perp, is just some gang member of little importance.
Mega-City 1 is portrayed as poverty-stricken. Peach Tree Block (not the greatest name for a block) is a slum. The overall feeling you get is Mega-City 1 is a bit of a dump. Garland's screenplay does not paint a high tech view of the future. This a grimy, dirty vision of MC-1.
Ma-Ma (worst villain name ever) isn't a great foe. Perhaps she'll be intimidating on screen but as a villain on paper she's kind of naff. A woman is hardly going to be much of a challenge for the ultra tough Judge Dredd! I'd rate her 2 out of 10 on the villain scale.
Dredd's character seems fairly consistent with Wagner's. John Wagner created Dredd and is the main Dredd writer for 2000AD. Dredd is taciturn, stoical, a man of action. The characterization is good.
Anderson's characterization is good too. She's fairly sensitive, a sharp contrast to Dredd's taciturn 'little emotion shown' character. There's some backstory about her parents. The Psi angle is used a bit, not to a huge extent. She comes over as physically tough which is consistent with how she's portrayed in the comic. The rookie subplot is okay. It works within the context of the larger storyline.
Garland has got the basics of Justice Dept right. A few changes here and there, such as 'responders' but overall it feels close to the comic version.
The Chief Judge appears. His/her actual name is not mentioned.
The perps are your standard type - seen in a million other action films. They're dumb, foul mouthed and can't aim straight! Nothing new there.
There's no satire, no poking fun at culture, at people.
There's no Wagner type ironic humour. The humour comes from the exchanges between the characters. Little of it seems to come from the situations. There's not much humour in the screenplay - period. It's done in a serious way.
The dialogue is peppered with "f***!" and "motherf***er!" No "drokks" - "gruRAB" or "stomms" to be seen. I missed them. The screenplay is very swear-ridden, perhaps too much?
It's violent. HeaRAB blow up, people are set on fire, cut in half, blown up. It reaRAB as 18 certificate but I guess the gore can edited down to 15 or PG 13 in the US.
Slo-mo is bullet time. It may not be done on screen like The Matrix but it seems similar. It doesn't play a major part in the story. It's featured early on but then it's more or less forgotten about. It does have some bearing on the plot though.
Plot - as mentioned, just Die Hard in a block. There is a a major plot development in the third act but it's still just Die Hard in a block.
The action is your standard stuff - mostly gun fights - a few fist fights too. No big action set pieces as such although I'm sure the action will look good on screen. The final battle is nothing you haven't seen before in a million cheap budget action films. No imagination there.
Conclusion
The screenplay is a missed opportunity to do something different, to show the crazy world of Mega-City 1. All the strangeness, the crazy perps, cits and crimes - there's none of that in Garland's screenplay. Not one thing. Garland is an unimaginative hack with zero passion for the material. A cynical writer just covering the basics. He stuck the rudimentary elements of Dredd's world into a Die Hard plot and believes that's good enough. I hope most fans can see that it's not good enough.
In terms of story originality I'd rate it 0 out of 10. Incredibly unimaginative. Overall I'd rate it 4 out of 10.
I hope this screenplay never gets made.
That will really get fans talking about it!
