Dredd TV Show: 8 Reasons Why It MUST Happen

8. Dredd Delivered What It Promised

The bad aftertaste of Sylvester Stallone's reviled 1995 Judge Dredd lingered on our pallets until Dredd stomped onto the scene and righted its many wrongs.

Director Pete Travis and writer Alex Garland had a firm grasp of how the dystopian metropolis of Mega-City One should translate to celluloid, pulling no punches in their page-to-screen-conversion of this vast, crime-ridden territory.

Dredd plays out like a 90-minute love letter to 2000 AD fans, capturing the complex and tortured nature of its protagonist yet never allowing us to glimpse beneath the helmet, ensuring the film abided by the number one rule laid down by the comics.

Paul Verhoeven-esque black humour added colour to an otherwise bleak cinematic world and Karl Urban was an inspired choice for the title role, his omnipresent scowl, prominent chin and stoic delivery making him every inch Joseph Dredd.

Like the comics before it, the film paints him as a man who lives by the letter of the law, a concept that's usually enforced by a bullet to the head in a place like Mega-City One. Never did Dredd tone down its ultra-violent source material or shy away from a graphic headshot.

The eponymous lawman often views the world in black and white before painting it red with blood - he's the product of a country gone to hell and the movie rightly portrays him as such, while offsetting his absolutist values against those of Olivia Thirlby's Judge Anderson, a psychically-gifted rookie Judge with the ability to sense the thoughts and emotions of others.

The two characters compliment one another as flipsides of the same coin and the mentor-trainee relationship that is forged during the movie's runtime hits all of the right notes.

Budgetary constrains were an issue, but Travis skilfully circumvented this problem by setting much of the action in a claustrophobic tower block. The director set out to create a bold and authentic take on the world of Judge Dredd, and that's exactly what he delivered.