Dredd

I like this movie more than the one with Silvester Stallone. Nice slowmotion shots and a good story for an action movie.

This film blow me away! I was not expecting this, a cop (a judge) based in the future with high violent's and great characters. You will think you will hate Dredd but you wont.

I think this adaptation of the Judge Dredd comics books are a much more how most people probably would expect that a Judge Dredd movie should be, especially compared to the rather disappointing 1995 version. That of course means that the movie is quite violent. Anyone who has ever read the comics should not be surprised about the fact that this movie is mostly about taking out the bad guys, and if you cannot take out the bad guys using violence then just use more violence.

Except for a few gripes that I will come to I quite liked this movie. The plot is a fairly simple one but it is also a plot that I would not have been surprised to find in one of the 2000 AD comics. It is a quite suitable plot for a Judge Dredd movie. The plot centres around the drug “Slo-Mo” which slows down your perception of time. This of course gave the director carte blanche to use extreme slow motion effects which could have been quite annoying if overdone. I think it is used quite well in this movie though. I especially liked the effects on the people standing behind the door that Dredd blew in at the beginning of the movie.

Judge Dredd himself is well played by Karl Urban and, thankfully, he does not remove the helmet in this movie. I’m sure it was done to satisfy Stallone’s ego in the 1995 movie and it was one of the things that ruined it. Judge Dredd is not supposed to remove his helmet, period. “Ma-Ma” is also a quite okay bad guy for this movie. Sufficiently psychopathic yet intelligent and rational enough to make a believable, at least as believable as a Judge Dredd villain can be, adversary to Dredd.

I have a few gripes about the movie though. My main gripe is that it is not the ultra-modern city from the comics, at least from the comics that I have read since I have not read them all. It is more of a bunch of mega-scrapers spread out among the city slum that is left from today and still looks very non-futuristic. The initial chase scene is done using an old Volkswagen van f...

About a million years ago (1980-85ish), when I was a boy, I bought a comic each and every week called 2000AD. And I loved it. I mean, properly LOVED it. The flagship strip in this publication was (and all these years later, remains) Judge Dredd. The titular lead character (his name, a play on that of novelty UK ska/reggae artist Judge Dread - who himself lifted the moniker from a Prince Buster tune - although there any similarity ends, absolutely) was a "Judge", a one-tier law enforcement agent with the authority to arrest, charge, try and sentence perpetrators of crime on the spot (including issuing the death sentence, a sentence dealt out frequently), operating in the early 22nd century in Mega City One, a post-apocalyptic overpopulated dystopian conurbation stretching from Boston to Washington DC. A grim, violent piece, it nevertheless managed to mine some gallows humour from the ultra-right wing dispensing of justice, especially as doled out by our perpetually helmeted Dirty Harry-style anti-hero (of course, Harry Callaghan was constantly railing against the system. Not so Joe Dredd; he WAS the f*cking system).

There were many different colourful characters within the pages of 2000AD but Dredd was by far the favourite (generally speaking; My personal favourite was Strontium Dog, followed closely by Nemesis the Warlock and The A.B.C. Warriors) and was always the one most ripe for a possible movie adaptation somewhere down the line. And so it was that in 1994 promising British director Danny Cannon was attached to direct Judge Dredd - the next Sylvester Stallone movie. D'Oh! Anyway, the movie was released in 1995 and it was pretty-much a travesty, top-to-bottom. Cannon, it appeared, was simply hired to be Stallone's bitch, and despite the thing looking the part (the art department deserve some props for that film, you know) Stallone seemed determined to kick any in-place mythology straight in the bin if he didn't fancy it (Dredd never takes his helmet off, beca...

So, nothing new under the sun. The same boring story and characters mixed in another movie. The only thing remarkable in this movie is the slow motion used during the drug usage, which is not much to say.

I really was quite a fan of Dredd, I thought the actors, post-staff, director, writers and cinematographer all did an outstanding job. However, there is one man in the crew who makes the rest look bad. By comparison. Because Paul Leonard-Morgan's soundtrack is by leaps and bounds the standout piece of what was already a decent film by its own right. His work on Dredd is praise enough (he also did spectacular thing's for Limitless in 2011). I never got into the deeper Judge Dredd universe (ie. 2000 AD comics) and almost all of my knowledge comes from cursory internet searches, and that "Dredd VS Death" video game. But from what I can gather, Dredd is a more honest depiction of the source material than the Stallone-led Judge Dredd of '95. So the music is outstanding, the Slow-Mo scenes are innovative and spectacularly produced and the specialised ammunition are astounding to watch. These are the three best parts of the film, in descending order, which to be fair, means that the gimmicks of Dredd are its most impressive feature. It's story is not broad (More of a "day in the life" than "save the human race" deal) and its characters are not greatly explored (though certainly not shallow), and it's mostly held together by these aforementioned "gimmicks", but more power to them! Better to have a solid baseline interconnected with deeply original fascination, than to have a boring rehashed piece of crap baseline, loosely stapled together with some poor excuse for dumping the same cliche $100,000 CGI explosions we've already seen four hundred times this quarter. Surprisingly, New Zealender Karl Urban (Star Trek, Star Trek: Into Darkness, LotR trilogy) makes for a better Dredd than I'd anticipated. Having a psychic was something I was initially sceptical of, too, however Olivia Thrilby (Juno, The Darkest Hour) put my concerns to rest after a long enough period to buy her role (about 25 minutes). And Lena Headey (Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Purge, Game of Thrones) I've...

Incendiary!

Dredd is directed by Pete Travis and written by Alex Garland. It stars Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey and Wood Harris. Music is by Paul Leonard-Morgan and cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle.

Review for 2D Version Only.

Sylvester Stallone' 1995 attempt at bringing Judge Dredd to the big screen was met with a critical mauling, both professionally and by serious fans of the 2000AD comic books from whence the character came. On its own terms it's a fun popcorn piece, but one that totally missed the fascist grime of the source. Here however, under the guidance of Travis and Garland, Dredd gets the picture the fans and the character deserves.

Plot is simple, we are in a dystopian future in a place known as Mega-City One. The only law and order are the Judges who are able to act as judge, jury and executioner. One such feared judge is Judge Dredd (Urban) and when he and his partner in training, Anderson (Thirlby), answer a call to a triple homicide at the multi storey slum tenement known as Peach Trees, they are locked in by crime boss Ma-Ma (Headey) and forced to defend themselves against practically everyone who resides there.

This is stripped down to the essence of what makes Judge Dredd such a beloved character in comic book lore. There's no need for backstories, love interests or comedy side-kicks, this is bad ass characters from either side of the law going at it full throttle. The action is unrelenting and explosive in its construction, bloody and brutal into the bargain as well.

Dredd the character is rightly kept to a basic level, he's a hard dude in a suit and helmet, with an arsenal of weapons upon his person and he delivers short sharp shock pieces of dialogue with gruff assertiveness. Anderson is a mutant of sorts, she can read minds, which superbly adds spice to this fight for survival narrative. Ma-Ma is a damaged villain, disgustingly menacing without histrionics, it's her calmness that's so terrifying.

At the cor...

I used to read the comics when I was young, and they were simple, straightforward shoot 'em ups with "Dredd" the epitome of tough, no-nonsense law enforcement in a futuristic environment where crime, violence, poverty and unemployment were pretty normal for many people. This time, Karl Urban takes the title role as the policeman/judge/jury type, and he and his rookie "Anderson" (Olivia Thirlby) investigate a few dead bodies in the lobby of an hundred-odd storey building controlled by the drug dealing matriarch "Ma-Ma" (Lena Headey) and her menacing henchmen. To begin with, they must find the killer and get out alive - but when some of his own kind arrive and turn against him - and his partner is captured - he sets out to settle this once and for all. Yep, the dialogue is shocking; the acting only little better (Headey is about as menacing as yesterday's creme brûlée) but that's not the point. It's meant to be a brutal action adventure - loads of pyrotechnics, attitude, gun-battles (with some great weapons, btw) that is just aimless fun. That's what is says on the tin, and that's what is does. Never any doubt about the ending, but the route is what it's all about - and for me, anyway, it's just 90 minutes of mindless escapism with a bit of mind-reading thrown in for good measure. Not everything can be Jane Austen - aim low and you ought not to be too disappointed.