Dredd is a 2012 film written by Alex Garland and directed by Pete Travis. It is criminally underrated, and I'd like to endeavor to tell you why.
Dredd is set in the far-flung futuristic Mega City One. The Judges are the only thing that stand between civilization and absolute chaos. When a routine triple homicide goes belly-up, one of the most ruthless Judges in Mega City One will have to fight against the odds with his newbie partner.
I. Stunning
This movie is gorgeous. Mega City One has never looked so good. It is a sprawling dystopic urban nightmare, but it looks and feels like a real place.
One of the things that immediately stands out is how colorful it is. A lot of sci fi, cyberpunk especially, gets sort of washed out in dark blues. Dredd ratchets up the greens and yellows, instead, which makes for vibrant, bright, neon colors. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle uses his depth of field and framing like a boss, and creates interesting, dynamic images throughout.
Of special note is the Slow Mo effects. "Slow Mo," in this film, is a street drug that causes its user to perceive the world at an exponentially slower rate. The filmmakers took that ball and ran with it. The sequences, and there are a few, are luminescent, and painterly. The action sequences are filled with stomach churning violence, but one cannot help but stand in awe of their beauty. Seeing a bullet rip through a man's cheek and explode his face in slow motion is as jaw-droppingly beautiful to see as it is disgusting to think about.
This was a relatively low budget film, but it wrung every damn cent out of that budget to make something visually stunning, and unforgettable.
One of the things that immediately stands out is how colorful it is. A lot of sci fi, cyberpunk especially, gets sort of washed out in dark blues. Dredd ratchets up the greens and yellows, instead, which makes for vibrant, bright, neon colors. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle uses his depth of field and framing like a boss, and creates interesting, dynamic images throughout.
Of special note is the Slow Mo effects. "Slow Mo," in this film, is a street drug that causes its user to perceive the world at an exponentially slower rate. The filmmakers took that ball and ran with it. The sequences, and there are a few, are luminescent, and painterly. The action sequences are filled with stomach churning violence, but one cannot help but stand in awe of their beauty. Seeing a bullet rip through a man's cheek and explode his face in slow motion is as jaw-droppingly beautiful to see as it is disgusting to think about.
This was a relatively low budget film, but it wrung every damn cent out of that budget to make something visually stunning, and unforgettable.
II. World Building
Alex Garland's script is just excellent. It's all hard-boiled, spartan prose, and finds its world-building in the tiny details. Garland rarely bogs down the proceedings with exposition, and rather lets the action tell the story and suggest the wider world.
The sets are covered in graffiti which suggest an entire world of detail at play. The little things like signs and shops and corpse zambonis (yes, corpse zambonis: you can't let that meat go to waste) all help to establish the kind of ridiculous, hard-tack world Dredd exists in.
The sets are covered in graffiti which suggest an entire world of detail at play. The little things like signs and shops and corpse zambonis (yes, corpse zambonis: you can't let that meat go to waste) all help to establish the kind of ridiculous, hard-tack world Dredd exists in.
III. Pitch Perfect Casting
Karl Urban is bad ass. He growls and frowns and struts around frame like the living embodiment of justice that Dredd is. And that helmet never comes off. Not once. How bad ass is that? They cast a relatively well-known lead actor and never show you more than the bottom of his face. What could easily have been a cartoonish 80s action pastiche comes alive in Urban's capable hands. But it's also cartoonish. And also an 80s action pastiche. And it works.
As bad ass as Urban is, Lena Heady proves her mettle here, as Ma Ma. She's a ruthless gangster. All scarred face and snarling yellowed teeth. Instead of yelling and scenery chewing, Heady's Ma Ma is quiet, whispering, and subtle. She feels like a woman who has survived Hell, and taken the Devil's chair by necessity rather than choice. She lives in an ugly world and has had to become ugly to live in it. Heady is assured and nasty. She's a great villain.
Olivia Thirlby plays Anderson's arc wonderfully. She goes from timid trainee, to seasoned justice dispenser over the course of the film and sells every second of it. What's really impressive is how the production never oversexed her character or complicated the story with unnecessary romance. Anderson wears tactical armor like everyone else (no titty armor here), holds her own against thugs (she even makes one pee his pants in terror), and seems to be as disturbed by Dredd's black-and-white view of the law as she is impressed by his experience and prowess. She is her own woman. I'd like to see more movie heroines like her.
As bad ass as Urban is, Lena Heady proves her mettle here, as Ma Ma. She's a ruthless gangster. All scarred face and snarling yellowed teeth. Instead of yelling and scenery chewing, Heady's Ma Ma is quiet, whispering, and subtle. She feels like a woman who has survived Hell, and taken the Devil's chair by necessity rather than choice. She lives in an ugly world and has had to become ugly to live in it. Heady is assured and nasty. She's a great villain.
Olivia Thirlby plays Anderson's arc wonderfully. She goes from timid trainee, to seasoned justice dispenser over the course of the film and sells every second of it. What's really impressive is how the production never oversexed her character or complicated the story with unnecessary romance. Anderson wears tactical armor like everyone else (no titty armor here), holds her own against thugs (she even makes one pee his pants in terror), and seems to be as disturbed by Dredd's black-and-white view of the law as she is impressed by his experience and prowess. She is her own woman. I'd like to see more movie heroines like her.
IV. It's a Video Game
You aren't watching a movie. You are watching Karl Urban play a video game. There are multiple levels, a boss, several mini-bosses, multiple ammo types, and even med packs.
This movie is a cool 95 minutes: it starts, sets up its bare-bones plot, and never lets its foot off the throttle.
This movie is a cool 95 minutes: it starts, sets up its bare-bones plot, and never lets its foot off the throttle.
V. Yeah, It's Basically The Raid
One of my problems with this movie is that it is very nearly identical to the 2011 action spectacle, The Raid. Our heroes are locked in a high rise building stuffed to the gills with a violent gang bent on their destruction. There's a sadistic boss, crooked cops, a sequence where a group of gunmen concentrate their gunfire across an open atrium to the floor across the way, and even a fight sequence in the drug production lab. There's no way you can ignore the fact that Garland lifted the basic plot beats from another film. And while his dialogue is original, and well-written, it does leave me a bit disappointed that he so shamelessly cribbed another film's plot.VI. Dredd is Problematic... On Purpose
Like RoboCop before him, Dredd is, on his face, an over-the-top action hero. But he's also kind of a fascist. His armor is Nazi storm-trooper chic, and his unforgiving interpretation of the law allows for no compassion or humanity. He punishes unilaterally.
He is earnest, and believes in the law. But it is his zeal that makes him so problematic. While you root for him and cheer his general bad assery, one has to stop and consider whether or not you'd ever want to run into him on the street. He would have no compunction cubing you (imprisonment in an isolation cube, which is never quite explained, but left to the horrific imagination of the viewer) for the slightest infraction.
It's worth thinking about the hyper-violent itch that Dredd scratches. And the consequences of concentrating such devastating power in the hands of one individual.
He is earnest, and believes in the law. But it is his zeal that makes him so problematic. While you root for him and cheer his general bad assery, one has to stop and consider whether or not you'd ever want to run into him on the street. He would have no compunction cubing you (imprisonment in an isolation cube, which is never quite explained, but left to the horrific imagination of the viewer) for the slightest infraction.
It's worth thinking about the hyper-violent itch that Dredd scratches. And the consequences of concentrating such devastating power in the hands of one individual.
VII. Should You See It?
Miscellany
- Eagle eyed viewers will catch all kinds of Easter Eggs and details: there is a reference to Officer Hershey (a character from the ridiculous 1995 Judge Dredd movie); the Mega Blocks all have names that are references to characters from the comics; there's a new American flag in the classroom that has only six stars (one for each Mega City); and so many more.- Duncan Jones was offered the director's chair, but refused, saying that his vision for what he wanted to do with a Judge Dredd movie was so specific, that he didn't want to compromise Garland's vision.
- Michael Biehn auditioned for the lead, but lost out to Karl Urban.
- Due to creative differences, Travis lost the editing room and editing duties were handed to Alex Garland. Travis monitored the cut, and both men released a statement that noted that they had reached an agreement about the edit of the film. Garland could have petitioned for a Co-Directing credit, but declined to do so. In an interview, Urban stated that Garland actually directed the entire film.
- This film has a body count of 102.
- The film was shot on a $45 million budget.
- While no sequel has officially been announced, a television series tentatively titled Mega City One is in development, possibly through Netflix Amazon, or HBO.
Comments
Post a Comment