I prefer the later version with Karl Urban - and to me it was expressive too.
Here’s a fun interview that includes a related question:
> Did having the helmet affect your acting at all? How did you maneuver around wearing that for the entire movie, and could you see through it?
> Oh yea [I could see through it], it took a bit to figure it out, it really did, and it was a challenge, you know, the challenge was how to communicate with an audience. And not only because my eyes weren’t visible, but because of the fact that the character of Dredd operates within a very narrow bandwidth, he is a man who has been trained to keep his emotions in check, so consequently it was very important for me to identify how I could humanize the character as much as possible. The sense of humor became very important, that dry, laconic sense of humor, and finding out where’s this character’s compassion? Where does his empathy lie?
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/judge-dredd-1995