Growing up during the Cold War, I became a fan of many of the post-apocalyptic pop culture works it spawned, like the Mad Max and Terminator films. I often imagined myself moving down to a bomb shelter and living under the Earth for years after a nuclear holocaust (which, now that I think about it, would actually compel me to live underground for the remainder of my natural life).
The new film Dredd, which apart from the British comic book series it adapted bears no relation whatsoever to the 1995 fiasco Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone as the title character, hearkened back to those years and was actually a pretty fun experience for me.
This new film, in which New Zealand-born actor Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings films, Star Trek) dons the helmet and padded uniform of the British pop-culture icon, is set in a dystopian, but not entirely implausible future in which most of humanity lives in Mega Cities littered with high-rise slums and steeped in crime and chaos. In the midst of this chaos the Justice Department is the only source of order, and its agents, known as judges, serve as policemen, juries, judges and executioners all rolled into one. This is not a society that puts much stock in due process of law, in short.
In one such city, Mega City One, of particular concern is the spread of a new narcotic known as Slo-Mo, which causes the user's perception of reality to slow down to 1% of its normal speed. When the drug lord responsible for the manufacture and sale of this drug, former prostitute Madeline Madrigal (Lena Headey), or Ma-Ma for short, orders the brutal execution of three double-crossing pushers,Judge Dredd, the most feared of all judges, is called onto the scene, and he brings with him a judge-in-training, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). Anderson has only just failed her exams but the Justice Department is keen on giving her a second chance because of her psychic abilities, and Dredd is given the task of evaluating her. While they're in the area, Dredd and Anderson make a drug bust, with Anderson's abilities detecting the killer Kay (Wood Harris) among the perps. Rather than execute him on the spot, though, Dredd decides to take Kay, who happens to be one of Ma-Ma's top lieutenants, back to the department for questioning.
Because she has eyes and ears almost everywhere in the towering tenement, Ma-Ma, whose entire operation could be compromised if Kay talks, has the entire building shut down by sealing it with blast doors and gives the occupants of the entire building the order to kill the two judges. What ensues is about an hour of unbridled mayhem and gore as Dredd and Anderson fight for their very lives.
Presumably due to the terrible impression left by Stallone's 1995 flop, this movie has failed to light up the box-office in every market it's been released with the exception of Dredd's birthplace, the United Kingdom, and to me that's a shame because as action films go, this one was surprisingly intelligent. Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point), in my opinion, has plenty to be proud of, whatever the final receipts of this film may be.
It does call for a bit of viewer discretion because of the somewhat extreme nature of the violence depicted. The three murder victims in the beginning, for example, are skinned before they are flung to their deaths from near the top of the 200-storey building to the concrete below, and much of the violence is so brutal it's been quite noticeably cut by the distributor, acting presumably at the behest of the local review board. The violence isn't only visually extreme but thematically so as well; to show her resolve to kill the judges, Ma-Ma unleashes two miniguns on an entire row of apartments, showing no hesitation to blow away the innocent residents living there. It has to be said, though, that the violence feels oddly fitting in a story where the world has descended so far into madness that such lofty concepts as presumption of innocence and trial by jury are mere relics consigned to history.
It's in these themes that the film fascinated me most; the satirical, often humorous notion of a world where cops and judges were rolled into one, a world not actually very far removed from our own in terms of rampant criminality, was interesting to see onscreen, especially considering my experience as a lawyer with how slowly the wheels of justice often grind. Of course, none of the excesses of the Cursed Earth (which is how the world is referred to) would be permissible in any truly civilized society, but to those of us who have grown cynical watching powerful people exploit the intricacies of the justice system, watching this drastically simplified version of justice is intriguing in the most escapist sense. I laughed out loud when, before Dredd executed a rather heinous perpetrator after reading aloud the "charges," the perp blew smoke in his face, to which Dredd responded "defense noted." It's little gems like this that make screenwriter Alex Garland's script engaging enough to elevate this beyond standard shoot-'em-up fare.
Of course, Garland's script and Pete Travis' direction would have been for naught if they did not have a solid performance from their lead actor, and Urban, who, notably, never removes his helmet, delivers on this front. He channels Clint Eastwood and sounds a lot more intimidating than Christian Bale did as Batman. It's a pretty difficult performance considering something like sixty percent of his face is obscured, and while I don't see Urban hoisting up any Oscars or Golden Globes because of it, he certainly deserves the accolades reviewers have heaped on him for what he's managed to do. Olivia Thirlby, looking a little less jail-baity here than she did in her breakout movie Juno, brings some much needed humanity to the proceedings and shows pretty clearly that it's not easy to have absolute power over who lives and who dies.
On an artistic level the film's grungy, unrelentingly dark look is a perfect fit for the story, and nods to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire) and production designer Mark Digby and his crew are definitely in order. Seeing the characters standing in the Peach Trees slum one really feels as if one is among the dregs of humanity.
It must be said, however, that by and large the filmmakers waste the 3-D format in which they reportedly shot the film. Apart from the visualization of the effects of "Slo-Mo" and a couple of scenes involving bullets, broken glass and drops of blood flying around, there is very little benefit offered by the format. The fact that there were plenty of shots of the dizzying heights of the Peach Trees tenement only highlights this shortcoming; there was plenty of opportunity for vertigo-inducing shots involving the building's atrium that could have played with depth perception, but they were quite simply never used. Even the post-production-converted Avengers, which featured an elevator descending, bothered to showcase a depth illusion. One consolation I took was that, at least, there was no unusual darkening of the image due to the 3-D. That much, at least, they got right.
There was also a story gaffe which I feel was never adequately explained; because he is engaged in a firefight with dozens of armed men Dredd finds himself running low on ammunition. The simple question that then arises is: why on earth doesn't Dredd pick up the guns of any of the dozens of men he wipes out in the course of the movie? Anderson picks up and uses a thug's gun late in the movie and this decision doesn't seem to have any ill effect on her. The notion that Dredd would only fight with his standard-issue firearm seems a little silly when weighed against a basic need to survive a highly dangerous situation.
Flaws notwithstanding, this was actually a rather solid movie, though not one I'd recommend spending a premium on for a 3-D screening. I had not actually intended to watch it in any format, but I had time to kill, and the 3-D presentation was the only one available where I was. Good thing, then, that 3-D screenings are a lot cheaper in SM Davao than they are in SM Manila (P250 as opposed to about P300). For anyone with a little time on their hands and a stomach for extreme violence, this is actually worth a look.
4/5
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