Review: Dredd 3D

Release date: 7 September
Certificate: 18
Director: Pete Travis
Starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey

What's the story?
Welcome to Mega City One, where the Judges risk their lives every day to keep order. When Dredd (Urban) takes a new recruit with psychic powers (Thirlby) to investigate some killings, their mission becomes a fight for survival when the pair realise they've stumbled upon the lair of a fierce drug lord (Headey).

What did we think?
It satisfyingly welcomes in its own simplicity. It's one day and one mission in the life of Dredd and Urban is a scowling badass in the role. It's a 3D movie that celebrates pure action and delivers it. If you came for 3D bad guy annihilation it's a yes. Comic book fan? Yes definitely. Subtlety? Hell no!

Flying over the enormity of Mega City One, Blade Runner-style, we immediately suspect that we're closer to the 2000 AD Comic than we were in Sly Stallone's glossy 1995 version. When we meet Karl Urban's fierce and uncompromising Dredd, we know it. He never removes his helmet and only shows the tiniest trace of emotion right at the end.

After all we're not here to get to know the guy. We're here to see him pound some bad guys. And yes, the CG will flash, the soundtrack will bang and the blood will spill in the most action-packed day-in-the-life story you'll watch this year. Attacking the mega-structure where Lena Headey's cold-blooded drug villain resides from the ground up, Urban and Thirlby skip from one action encounter to another, the stakes rising satisfyingly as the frames retain the look of graphic novel panels.

Watch it in 3D if you can. It's a movie that's made for 3D rather than one that's simply shunted into the third dimension to make some extra bank.

Verdict: Easily Dredd's best screen outing. Expect sequels.