To manage the tide of lawlessness there are the Judges. Militarised law enforcers responsible for the investigation, enforcement, judgement, and where decided upon, execution. It's a harsh regime where sentences are long and the death sentence not uncommon.
Rookie Judge Anderson is on the cusp of dropout and is given one last chance by the Chief Judge on account of their rare telepathic mutation, an assessment day with veteran Judge Dredd.
As the day begins they attend a triple murder in Peachtrees block, a routine thing for a Judge. However they inconvenience Peachtrees' druglord Ma-Ma who needs to make sure the suspect involved is never properly questioned.
Dredd is a film that picks its battles. As much as the character is beloved by middle-aged fans, by 2012 after a badly received adaptation in the 90s starring Sylvester Stallone few other people probably cared about Dredd.
What they do is smarter I think than they are given credit for.
Armed with a modest budget they went for a solid journeyman lead in Karl Urban, similar in Lena Heady as Ma-Ma and relative unknown Olivia Thirlby as Anderson.
Then they ditched anything that was likely to alienate the mass audience (or couldn't afford) and stuck to delivering a straightforward but ultraviolent action movie that needed little explanation.
The smart bit was they also avoided anything that was likely to alienate the fan audience.
Famously Sylvester Stallone removed his face-obscuring Judge's helmet in his portrayal. Despite many of the very well delivered visual nods to the source material in the previous movie this killed it with the fanbase. Karl Urban keeps the helmet on throughout.
Almost none of the weird/fantastic visual design elements of the original Judge Dredd material makes it through bar the badges and helmets. Instead you get a 'tactical' version of Judges. Which proved acceptable to fans and mass audience alike.
Megacity 1 is portrayed simply as a modern city grown hugely and the block Peachtrees similarly an awful tower block become huge and crossed with a food court. Again something I don't think anybody blinked at.
Budget constraints meant that most of the vehicles and guns, bar the Judges' Lawgivers/Lawmasters are simply modern items and that jars a little.
Everybody does well in a 'mid budget action movie' kinda way. Again they don't alienate the fanbase by giving Dredd any flowery dialogue, he glowers and growls his way through procedural orders, threats and observations.
Lena Headey gives good psycho druglord, Olivia Thirlby is OK as the rookie and a young Domhnall Gleason is memorable as Ma-Ma's hacker. Wood Harris as the suspect who kicks it all off is kind of unmemorable though, which is a shame given his screen presence in The Wire.
So in the end this works on two levels. It's a competent ultraviolent action movie and also delivers a Judge Dredd movie fans can feel good about liking, even though it's really just the thinnest of cosmetic skins over the former.
Recommended, 8/10, if you like either of these things. Less so if you want a more varied action movie, this shows its middling budget quite strongly.