Star: Sylvester Stallone

Judge Dredd (1995) – Sylvester Stallone

This movie is a weird combination of being already quite dated, yet futuristic in genre.

It’s frequently funny while being delivered in a serious tone — funny in how it accurate captures and exaggerates the inherent flaws in the long arm of the law.

It gets a bit filthy half way through, after Dredd gets wrongly accused, and convicted, then his prisoner transport shuttle gets grounded, and Dredd gets captured by a family of cannibals. Fortunately this scene doesn’t last too long, and evolves into something mildly interesting, albeit a bit slow and boring still.

It gets a bit gruesome at the end, as half-made clones come to life looking like zombies covered in goo. That whole scene is reminiscent of the final battle scene from Demolition Man — also starring Sylvester Stallone (alongside Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock) — from 2 years prior. Not necessarily in the zombie theme, but everything else about the set and vibe is similar.

I’m going to rate this movie Bang Average, and that may even be slightly generous — it had a lot of potential but wasn’t really played well to satisfy the action hero movie fan. That makes it a similar level to the 2012 remake, starring Karl Urban, which I also rated Bang Average, even if it has a different mix of pros & cons.

Demolition Man (1993) – Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock

Demolition Man (1993)

This was a pretty good action movie in the 90s. It has an interesting core concept and some entertaining scenes. Some good action and some good humour. But the action does get a bit monotonous at times – some of the action scenes could do with condensing.

Sylvester Stallone plays the policeman, Sandra Bullock plays his partner on the force, and Wesley Snipes plays the outlaw they’re trying to apprehend. They all do a decent job but are working with a fairly mediocre script here, even though the core concept is quite creative. In fact it might not be creative at all – it might just be a sneak preview of what’s really on its way, since many of the strange futuristic concepts in this movie are already half way standardised in the real world today. Having said that, after a long, over-extended, thinly-spread monotonous action scene near the end, the very ending of this movie is actually quite a pleasant one as the friendly/draconian society returns to time more tolerable and everyone left alive gets along just fine with the saviour/dictator gone and his mercenary too.

Overall I rate it an (upper) OK movie, considering its quality & density of entertainment value for action movie fans.

The Specialist (1994) – Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone

Not a bad movie, starring Sylvester Stallone a CIA explosives expert turned mercenary for hire on the free market, and Sharon Stone as the woman who hires him. They both put on fine performances as expected, although the plot is a bit thin and steamy. Supporting actors include James Woods and Eric Roberts who both do decent jobs as the two main bad guys in this movie, both reporting to the mafia boss played by Rod Steiger who does an average job with a terribly fake sounding accent.

The movie’s mood is slow but captivating, and the action is intermittent but of a fairly high standard – overall it kind of works. With grand musical effects it has vibes of an old Bond movie just without the fancy plot – this one’s very one-dimensional but still an enjoyable watch if you’re not too busy and haven’t seen this movie in the last decade or so.