Dredd 3D

Dredd 3D 77 Cast: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey, Wood Harris Director: Pete Travis Rating: R, for strong bloody violence, language, drug use and some sexual content Running time: 95 minutes

In the movies, the old saying goes, some stars wear the hat. And sometimes, the hat wears them.

Say whatever you want about Sylvester Stallone’s kitschy 1995 turn as comic book lawman Judge Dredd, the dude wore the helmet. Karl Urban replaces him in the new Dredd 3D. The helmet wears Karl.

He never takes off the oversize thing. It closes off his performance and masks his charisma. We only see his scowling jaw and hear his hissed one-liners, chewing out the mutant judge-in-training Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) who forgets to wear hers.

“Sir, helmets interfere with mypsychic abilities.”

“Think a bullet in the head might interfere with ’em more,” the Judge mutters.

In a future when much of America is irradiated and 800 million people are crammed into MegaCity, the concrete metropolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, tens of thousands are packed into mega high-rises, many at the mercy of mega criminals.

The judges are all that stand in the way of anarchy. They’re wired-in, hi-tech hunter/prosecutor/killers, men and women who solve (sort of) crimes, catch criminals and dole out punishment, on the spot.

The death penalty is their favorite.

There’s a new drug making the rounds. There always is. “Slo Mo,” it’s called, and Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) is the drug lord who has it.

This Dredd is a limited vision of the future, mainlyconfined to one towering, rundown high-rise. Dredd and Anderson nab one of Ma-Ma’s thugs (Wood Harris) and must fight their way out of the building Ma-Ma’s minions have on lockdown. This could have been claustrophobic, an action epic in compact form. Die Hard and last year’s Indo-Australian thriller The Raid are versions of this set-up that work.

Wi t h Dredd 3D, you get only a taste of that as the judges blaze their way through Ma-Ma’s murderers and supposedly innocent bystanders and await the backup that seems awfully slow in coming.

The 3-D here is used to greatest effect in slowmotion shootings, impalings and throat slashings - blood-on-the-lens stuff. The villain is poorly drawn and Headey just isn’t “big” enough - in persona, performance or presence - to suggest a murderous monster.

Thirlby, sensitive and cute as ever, needs more to do.

And Urban is lost behind that big ol’ helmet.