Dredd (2012)

Most people think so. 83% of audiences gave it a thumbs up, by Google's archived audience score. Critics gave it 70%.

In the future, America is a dystopian wasteland. The latest scourge is Ma-Ma, a prostitute-turned-drug pusher with a dangerous new drug and aims to take over the city. The only possibility of stopping her is an elite group of urban police called Judges, who combine the duties of judge, jury and executioner to deliver a brutal brand of swift justice. But even the top-ranking Judge, Dredd, discovers that taking down Ma-Ma isn’t as easy as it seems in this explosive adaptation of the hugely popular comic series. Wikipedia ↗

Dredd is a 2012 British-American science fiction action film directed by Pete Travis. Karl Urban stars as Judge Dredd, a law enforcement officer in Mega-City One — a vast, violent, irradiated metropolis stretching from Boston to Washington D.C. in a post-apocalyptic future — who serves simultaneously as judge, jury, and executioner. When Dredd and his psychic rookie partner Judge Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby, respond to a triple homicide in Peach Trees, a 200-story slum tower, the building's drug lord Ma-Ma, played by Lena Headey, locks down the entire structure and orders its residents to kill the Judges.

Karl Urban delivered the entire performance from behind Dredd's signature helmet visor, never once showing his full face — a commitment to the comic's portrayal that 1995's Stallone version had abandoned. The film's R-rated violence was stylishly executed, with the drug "Slo-Mo" providing a narrative justification for elaborately beautiful slow-motion photography. Dredd earned only $41 million worldwide on a $45 million budget but became one of the most celebrated cult action films of the decade.