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Dredd. He is THE LAW! |
Director: Pete Travis
Cast: Karl Urban (Judge Dredd), Olivia Thirlby (Judge
Cassandra Anderson), Lena Headey (Ma-Ma), Wood Harris (Kay), Domhnall Gleeson
(Computer expert), Warrick Grier (Caleb), Deobia Oparei (TJ), Rakia Ayole
(Chief Judge)
Dredd is the
second attempt to bring the brutal post-apocalyptic lawman to the screen, after
a disastrous 1990s version starring Sylvester Stallone. Famously, that film
gained the undying enmity of the comic book fans by having Dredd remove his
signature helmet (and show his face) at every opportunity. Here, Karl Urban
dutifully keeps the helmet on at all times.
In a future USA, Mega-City One is a sprawling metropolis of
800 million residents and 17,000 crimes a day. To combat crimes, the Judges are
a police force with the powers to sentence and execute criminals on the spot.
Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is the most feared and experienced Judge on their
books, a man of rigid rules who sees the world in black and white. Given a new
psychic recruit, Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), Dredd makes an arrest at Peach
Trees, a 200-storey slum building ruled by brutal crime lord Ma-Ma (Lena
Headey). After Dredd and Anderson arrest one of Ma-Ma’s key lieutenants, she
locks down the building, isolates the Judges, and demands their execution by
the residents.
Dredd is a super
violent but entertaining siege movie, with the twist being that the siege
involves the heroes being locked in with their opponents – the heroes trying first
to get out, then to stop their enemies getting in. Now I know very little at
all about the source material, but, unlike the Stallone film, this film
succeeds as a Dredd movie by simply
treating its events as a “regular episode” rather than a ground-shifting, world-at-stake
mega-movie. As such, it can focus on the events that are relevant to the
immediate, simple story and loosely sketch out the other elements of the future
(enough to keep us interested and to understand the context). It focuses on a
fast-paced, exciting story and enough character detail and interest to keep you
involved.
The film is snappily directed by Travis with a decent,
stripped down script from Alex Garland, and has a good performance at its
centre from Karl Urban, who has the collaborative lack of ego to make Dredd, rather
than his own performance, the centre of the story, . Urban also manages to make
a character who is an imposing and lethal killing machine into someone we also
respect for his adherence to a firm moral code. And he adds enough texture to
the part to suggest a certain softening in his attitudes towards Anderson (a
very effective Thrilby) across the course of the movie. Headey also makes a
great enemy, a sort of Cersei Lannister on heroin and acid, a totally remorseless
megalomanic.
The film packs a great deal of punch and its design is very
impressive. The Peach Trees setting is an imposing vision of a crap-sack
future, while also having a very clear navigation for the deadly game of
cat-and-mouse Dredd and Anderson play throughout the film. The film doesn’t
have much in the way of wit to it – the source material is apparently more
satirical, not something that comes across here to be honest – but it does
understand the rigidity and certainty of its lead character and it doesn’t
flinch from the dark consequences of its hero’s actions.
I’m no expert on the original but this is rather a lot of
simple, unchallenging fun that manages to swiftly establish characters –
through neat writing and good acting – that make sense, are complex and feel
very true to the tone of the source material. It’s violent and bloody, and yes
it has many beats in it that are slightly predictable or twists on many similar
“one man against an army” movies we’ve seen, but it has more than enough merit
to be worth your time.
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