ABSTRACT
Whilst we argue that Judge Dredd (1995) is a modern take on the traditional legal theme, it is important to place the film in terms of where its antecedents lie. Dredd, the central character, is a figure who not only acts in a traditional legal role but also performs a wider criminal justice role. Given this amalgamation, the ways in which the police have been portrayed and constructed is a useful starting point:
In terms of their portrayal within popular culture, as Reiner has noted, policemen were rarely the heroes within film or other fictional treatments: ‘Until the late 1960s, a professional policeman was rarely the hero of a film. In the early days of Hollywood, the Keystone Cops were portrayed as clumsy buffoons, causing much protest from the law-enforcement establishment about this imbecilic image. At the 1913 Convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a resolution was passed to stop such movie misrepresentation’ (Reiner, 1978, p 706). Indeed, within fictional portrayals of private detectives, the policeman was most often utilised as the foil who illustrates the impotence of the police and the stunning forensic ability of the PI, a device notably employed between Inspector Lestrade and Sherlock Holmes for example.
