You listening, perp? Dredd is the law!

Here in the States, it can be hard to find a Judge Dredd fan. Too many moviegoers merely roll their eyes (rightfully so) and try and suppress the memory of the woefully misguided Sylvester Stallone misfire from the summer of 1995. Coming on the heels of films like Braveheart and Apollo 13, Stallone's Judge Dredd was off on nearly every level - Dredd even removed his helmet, for cryin' out loud! That's like Dirty Harry wearing a corset and stockings to work vice.

I missed 2012's Dredd in theaters, but over the last year it's been building some sizable word of mouth. So when I saw it in Amazon's Black Friday sale for the ridiculous price of eight bucks, I had to satisfy my curiosity. Money well spent! This lean and faithful Dredd is to its lame precursor what Daniel Craig's Casino Royale is to David Niven's.

Karl Urban (aka Leonard McCoy 2.0) plays futuristic lawman Judge Dredd as though he stepped right out of the pages of UK comic 2000 A.D. Beneath the helmet, all you see is the sneering mouth and lantern jaw of Mega City One's sternest enforcer - and what a downturned sneer it is! Urban and director Pete Travis get the tone just right and deliver a lean and particularly mean dose dystopia. If Dredd has a soulmate predecessor, it's Paul Verhoeven's Robocop - which is perfect, as Robo's "Your move, creep," persona reminded many viewers of Judge Dredd the comic when it can out. This Dredd is equally programmed and single-minded, poised on the edge of outright satire. But Dredd is also wildly, enthusiastically violent in a way that we haven't really seen since Verhoeven's heyday. Heads explode and bodies come apart with unhinged abandon.

Dredd's tasked with assessing a rookie partner - Judge Anderson, straight out of the comics - a female Judge with unique psychic abilities. Their training day takes a bad turn when they become locked in the siege of a gigantic apartment block (think Cabrini Green on steroids), ruled by unflinchingly violent drug lord Ma-Ma, wonderful depicted by Game of Thrones' Lena Headey, adding another despicable villainess to her resume.

Ma-Ma's drug of choice is a sci-fi brain popper called Slo-Mo, that gives the user a surreal, ultra slow-motion perception of the world which Travis has great fun with.

Think of all the times you pop in a sci-fi action flick hoping for something that really delivers only to be dismally disappointed. Dredd had me immediately primed for a sequel. It's a superior action movie that remembers how they used to make 'em and actually bothers to be fun. Dredd is a blast and that helmet is never coming off!