Nov 012012
 

Rarely does a movie studio elect to give up the opportunity for over-the-top story elements, uber-flashy special effects, and well-versed comedic timing to bring us a tale as close to its iconic roots as this one.  After an exhaustive bout of trick-or-treating with the 3yo, I took my wife to the cheap theater on Halloween night to finally get a look at Lionsgate’s remarkably loyal interpretation of the 2000 AD comic strip character and his pleasant little dystopia, Megacity One.  I got an hour and thirty-five minutes of gut-clenching action and bloody mayhem for my trouble; my wife got an hour and thirty-five minutes of drooling over Karl Urban’s chin and the (apparently far too) occasional shot of said actor’s leather-clad posterior.

We were both diggin’ it.

Dredd stars the quintessential up-and-coming character actor (recognizable – and I mean that sarcastically, since the man literally seems to become a different person with every role – from such notable genre offerings as Reaper in Doom, Eomer in Lord of the Rings, Lord Vakko in the Chronicles of Riddick, and Dr. Leonard McCoy in the new Star Trek movie) in the lead role, paired up with Olivia Thirlby (whom you may recognize… but probably not) as a timid rookie with a headful of psychic juju, attempting to bring down Megacity One’s newest drug kingpin (queenpin?), portrayed by Lena Headey (who reprised Linda’s Hamilton’s iconic role in the Terminated TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles and has more recently portrayed that sexy biotch Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones) as a heavily-scarred skinny white girl with a penchant for putting people’s insides on their outsides.  All things considered, the cast did a fantastic job of bringing us more fully into Dredd’s disturbing grit and cynicism by refusing to waver in the face of unflattering characterizations and a canonical devotion to Judge Dredd’s essential anonymity.  That’s right, folks… you never see the man’s face.

Stallone didn’t have it in him, if you know what I mean.

Since the story revolved around this singular scenario, 90-some-odd percent of the film actually took place in one building, albeit a structure so magnanimous that it provided life-giving shelter to some 75 thousand grateful citizens.  That’s right.  It housed more people than my hometown, on about 200 levels.  I’d say that makes a pretty good battleground for any FPS.  And we got to see them tear the place to pieces as Headey’s mildly listless villainess took a profound interest in throwing a stupid number of mooks and heavy ordinance at the encroaching judges, who were – after all – just trying to do their civic duty.  The action scenes played well, if a little predictably gratuitous at times, and the story’s tasteful devotion to simplicity made if feel more believable than similar films that spend half their time trying to impress the viewer with futuristic nomenclature and creative conceptualizations of postmodern tropes.

Dredd has enjoyed a slow but steady growth in box office receipts, earning over $36 million worldwide by the end of October, but it has a ways to go before it makes enough money to earn a sequel.  It was a fun and exciting film that never really lets up, and – if your girl is into action movies and/or Karl Urban’s chin – it can even be a remarkable aphrodisiac.

Happy November, friends!

 

Orryn Emrys, the Prismatic Dragon, is the director of the Prismatic Tsunami web community and the host of the popular Metagamers Anonymous RPG podcast. Learn more at http://www.prismatictsunami.com.

  3 Responses to “Review: Dredd”

Comments (3)
  1. A beautiful review, my friend. I haven’t seen the movie as of this posting….but i will now. Thanks for contributing!!!

     
  2. Very well-written and thought-provoking…I never would have thought Judge Dredd would serve as an aphrodisiac lol

     

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