Dredd

What if I told you that in 2012, somebody decided to take another crack at a franchise Sylvester Stallone had poisoned utterly and while nobody was looking, quietly produced one of the best sci-fi action flick in years?



Dredd keeps itself simple.  Which is smart.  So many comic book adaptions feel like they either need to do an origin story or they feel the need to do some grand climactic arc of the comic which they can't possibly do justice to.  Dredd tries something else.  It gives you a perfect, film sized example of what a Dredd story should be.

Intense sci-fi action mixed with background pieces of social commentary.

When ten minutes in, we are informed that the food court will reopen in half an hour as a giant roomba like device cleans up from the opening villain's recently curtailed murder spree, we get the idea that the filmmaker understands.

Cleverly, this is not a movie about Judge Dredd, though it is unquestionably a Judge Dredd movie.  Focus is put on newbie Judge Anderson, a trainee on her final exam.  She is to shadow Dredd.  Making a mistake is death.  Surviving the mistake is failure and being drummed out of the academy.

All of which goes fine, till random chance finds them involved in a turf dispute that's had the Mama clan turning rivals into greasy stains on the ground.  When one of Mama's men gets captured, she locks the block down and puts a bounty out on the judges heads.

It's impossible to not compare the film to the Raid at this point, though the filmmakers swear they had no knowledge of each other.  Regardless, both are awesome enough and different enough in feel (Dredd is definitely more shootery than the raid) that both films can be enjoyed.

Everything else about the movie comes together to support that simple premise.  More than simply the plot, this film is about making Mega City 1 feel like a living breathing place and it arguably does that better than even the comic does.

The civilians in the comic are usually overweight human parodies, fairly devoid of sympathy.  In this film, we see more of them.  We see them at play.  We see them shopping.  Most of them are normal people.  Which gives the whole thing so much more value.  The minigun scene for instance, may well have been played for laughs in the comics.

All of this is set to a fantastic soundtrack too.  So you should take a watch.

Posted in: 2012, Dredd, Judge, Judge Dredd, Karl, Karl Urban, Movie, Movie Review, Urban