The Playlist:
Remakes and reboots always seem to demand comparisons to their predecessors, but “Dredd” evokes a slightly different relationship: What Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” is to George Romero’s original, Pete Travis’ film is to, no, not Danny Cannon’s 1995 film “Judge Dredd,” but Paul Verhoeven’s “Robocop.” In both cases, gifted visual stylists took fertile, socially-conscious subject matter, pared out the cultural commentary, and left behind an engaging, if empty, cinematic experience. And for the most part, that works, although the abrupt ending of Travis’ film only highlights its thematic vacuousness, while Snyder’s bleak post-credits punchline successfully disguised it (at least at the time). Nevertheless, by far the better of the two cinematic interpretations of this particular character, “Dredd” is a video game procedural tied to great visuals, but one without deeper substance to make its experience remotely meaningful. (Cinema, Dredd, San Diego Comic-Con) B-/A