It is directed by Danny Cannon and stars Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd, a law enforcement officer in the crime-ridden futuristic metropolis of Mega-City One.

Armand Assante, Diane Lane, Rob Schneider, Joan Chen, Jürgen Prochnow, and Max von Sydow appear in supporting roles.

The film was produced by Charles Lippincott and Beau E. L. Marks, with a screenplay by William Wisher Jr. and Steven E. de Souza.

Reviewers criticized the film for its script and perceived lack of originality and faith to its source material, along with Stallone's acting.

Later, Dredd apprehends Fergie, a hacker and recent parolee hiding from the violence in a city-owned robot, sentencing him to five more years for property destruction.

Meanwhile, Rico, secretly imprisoned at the Aspen Penal Colony, receives a covert message and escapes, returning to Mega-City One.

He retrieves his Judge uniform, Lawgiver gun, and reactivates a decommissioned ABC Warrior, a combat robot, to serve him.

Dredd is sentenced to life imprisonment while Fargo embarks on the "Long Walk", the final task of a retired Judge to enforce the law until death in the Cursed Earth.

Griffin uses the chaos to convince the Council to unlock Janus and clone a new Judge army to ruthlessly enforce the law.

At the Janus lab in the Statue of Liberty, Rico replaces the original DNA sample with his own to cultivate clones with free will as his "family", refusing to let them be controlled as he was.

[8] Cannon described his vision as "the Ben-Hur of comic book movies," and turned down an offer to direct Die Hard with a Vengeance to make the film.

Stallone and his co-star Armand Assante wore blue contact lenses to match von Sydow who plays their genetic 'father'.

Judge Dredd was his first feature film as sole production designer, he had previously worked on several high-profile music videos, and was a concept artist under Anton Furst.

[12] The Statue of Liberty face was built in Lenox, Massachusetts, by a subsidiary of executive producer Andy Vajna's company Cinergi.

The prosthetic make-up designs for Mean Machine Angel were created by artist Chris Cunningham (credited as 'Chris Hill'), supervised by Nick Dudman.

The production initially intended to use an actor in a suit to depict the ABC Warrior, but Danny Cannon insisted they build it for real using animatronics.

Prior to leaving the project, Goldsmith composed and recorded a short piece of music that would eventually be used for the film's trailers and advertising campaigns.

Their guitarist Richey Edwards disappeared in early 1995, and since the song was the last written with him in the band, it never made it to the final soundtrack listing.

In 1995, Epic Records released a soundtrack album featuring seven tracks from Silvestri's score (all performed by the Sinfonia of London but most were not versions used in the film) and songs by the Cure, The The, White Zombie, Cocteau Twins, Leftfield.

Prior to the film's world premiere on 30 June 1995, Judge Dredd had to be re-cut and submitted to the MPAA five times in order to get it down from a NC-17 to a R rating.

Director Danny Cannon was so disheartened over the constant creative disputes with Stallone that he swore he would never again work with another big-name actor.

For example, a scene where Rico kills news reporter Hammond and his wife was originally longer and bloodier because it showed them getting hit by bullets in slow-motion.

[16] Even the film's climax was deleted, scenes showing Dredd fighting and killing clone Judges was removed prior to the theatrical release.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 22% based on reviews from 55 critics, with an average rating of 4.00/10; the site's critical consensus is "Judge Dredd wants to be both a legitimate violent action flick and a parody of one but director Danny Cannon fails to find the necessary balance to make it work.

[citation needed] Roger Ebert, in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film 2 out of 4 and wrote: "Stallone survives it, but his supporting cast, also including an uninvolved Joan Chen and a tremendously intense Jürgen Prochnow, isn't well used.

"[25] Caryn James of The New York Times wrote: "Although it is full of noise and fake firepower, Dredd simply lies there on the screen until the final scenes.

"[11] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film 1 out of 4, and wrote: "Usually engaging and sympathetic, Stallone is blank and tongue-tied here, an immovable slab in the midst of 95 minutes of gunfire, explosions and Gothic excess.

"[29] In a 2017 retrospective review Richard Trenholm from CNET wrote that the film "drew more more shrewdly on the comic's abundant history than the 2012 version" and "absolutely nailed the look of Mega City One".

Trenholm noted that "sets, costumes and vehicles were fantastic", while "looming ABC warrior and grotesque Angel Gang" were "both triumphs of pre-CGI physical effects".

I knew we were in for a long shoot when, for no explainable reason Danny Cannon, who's rather diminutive, jumped down from his director's chair and yelled to everyone within earshot, "FEAR me!