A scene early in the criminally underrated 2012 sci-fi adaptation Dredd tells us what we’re in for—a sense not just of the plot, but of Karl Urban, the star who’ll fuel this movie’s unbroken adrenaline rush.

“Do you require backup?” police control asks Judd Dredd—who, as in the comic the movie is based on, serves as judge, jury, and executioner in the postapocalyptic future of Mega-City One.

“No,” Dredd says, with self-confidence that Silicon Valley bosses would pay billions to possess.

Karl Urban more than capably carries—and, sometimes, hauls, like a chiseled, square-jawed Sisyphus who spits on the fate Greek mythology has failed to condemn him to—Dredd. Despite the fact that Urban wears a face-covering helmet the entire time.

Dredd was largely ignored when it came out, the victim of bad timing and worse marketing. It was probably risky to attempt another Dredd film at all after the 1995 flop Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone. And it certainly didn’t help that earlier the same year, The Avengers had all but cemented Marvel’s grip on comic-book cinema, and The Raid: Redemption, an instantly revered Indonesian actioner with a strikingly similar premise, arrived on U.S. shores. A generic ad campaign undersold Dredd’s brutal violence and its low-key political satire and oversold it as a 3D blockbuster event to an American audience already growing weary of the pricey, gimmicky format.

All that being said, I remember it going over like gangbusters in the room I saw it in. My friend and I watched in awe—of the practical set design, seamless visual effects, and the subtly-planted jabs at a (literally) faceless police state in the script by Alex Garland, years before Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War) became an auteur writer/director commanding some of A24’s highest budgets.

Maybe the biggest lesson of Dredd, however, is that hiding Karl Urban, visually or otherwise, is a mistake we should never make again. Amazon Prime’s viral superhero satire The Boys (whose fifth and final season is currently streaming) clearly took that note—since 2019, the show has put him front and center as William “Billy” Butcher, the leader of a gang of vigilantes fighting corrupt superheroes. And Urban is finally getting the recognition he deserves.

Ridiculously handsome in an unpretty way that recalls male action and specifically Western stars, like Clint Eastwood, Urban is lower-profile famous compared to, say, the collective Hollywood Chrises, which doesn’t necessarily help him when it’s promo-cycle time. He’s one of the most consistently excellent actors of his generation, but he’s done most of the work that proves it in comparatively disreputable genres, shading his performances with human charisma as well as lethal force.

He made his not-so-fortuitous debut in 2002’s Ghost Ship, a critically-derided supernatural horror movie that’s since developed cult fandom in particular for its impeccable opening kill sequence. After that he worked internationally, with interesting directors: as Éomer, the leader of the Riders of Rohan, the cavalry battling Mordor, in Peter Jackson’s latter two Lord of the Rings movies (i.e., the ones where the action turns all the way up); as baddie Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy; as Vin Diesel’s nemesis Commander Vaako in David Twohy’s The Chronicles of Riddick, which would only get its flowers from fans, thanks in part to an unrated director’s cut, long after its 2004 theatrical release; as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy in the 2009 J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek and its sequels; and as Skurge the Executioner in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok.