'Dredd 3D' not as dreadful as expected

Actually, I didn't expect Dredd to be dreadful, although I'm honestly not surprised its box office has been, well... exactly that.

Dead or alive... wait, this isn't "Robocop".  Or is it?

So, yeah,  I am now one of the dozens of people who went to see Pete Travis' Dredd 3D (albeit in 2D) in theaters. The film opened this last Friday, and made a pathetic $6.3 million at the US box office over the weekend, and isn’t likely to make enough to cover the cost of its reported $45 million budget. Clearly, no one went to see it. Which is a shame, because Dredd is actually, sort of unbelievably, very decent—and will probably go down as a better Robocop movie than the dreaded reboot of that franchise due in 2013.


Official Synopsis:

In the future, America is an irradiated wasteland. On its East Coast, running from Boston to Washington DC, lies Mega City One—a vast, violent metropolis where criminals rule the chaotic streets. The only force of order lies with the urban cops called "Judges", who possess the combined powers of judge, jury and instant executioner. Known and feared throughout the city, Dredd is the ultimate Judge, challenged with ridding the city of its latest scourge—a dangerous drug epidemic that has users of "Slo-Mo" experiencing reality at a fraction of its normal speed. 

During a routine day on the job, Dredd is assigned to train and evaluate Cassandra Anderson, a rookie with powerful psychic abilities thanks to a genetic mutation. A heinous crime calls them to a neighborhood where fellow Judges rarely dare to venture—a 200 story vertical slum controlled by prostitute turned drug lord Ma-Ma and her ruthless clan. When they capture one of the clan's inner-circle, Ma-Ma overtakes the compound's control center and wages a dirty, vicious war against the Judges that proves she will stop at nothing to protect her empire. With the body count climbing and no way out, Dredd and Anderson must confront the odds and engage in the relentless battle for their survival. 

A typical, high-concept, action picture set in a high-rise—and in fact, really just a lower-budgeted blockbuster, pushed beyond the regular summer release window by distributor Lionsgate for some reason—Dredd is a super simple, not particularly deep, movie, completely devoid of things like complex characters and complicated plot. But sometimes, those things don't matter when a film is just badass, which this certainly is.

Karl Urban kicks all sorts of ass as the titular Dredd: judge, jury and brutal and totally awesome executioner. The film is gritty, gory and generally just kinda good. Or at least it’s fun and entertaining as all hell, and Urban—who hides behind a helmet, and doesn't show his face the whole film—is a big part of that. The screenplay, by Alex Garland, is rife with some great, uber-cheesy, Robocop-esque lines, like, "You have 20 seconds to comply." That Urban delivers such lines in a detached Peter Weller-like tone seals the deal.

I also liked that Garland and Travis didn't try and force a contrived love story subplot between Dredd and his gifted young female partner Anderson (Olivia Thrilby). Theirs is more of a mentor, mentee relationship. And even then, it’s more just an emotionless and formidable (almost unstoppable and seemingly robotic) supercop and his psychic sidekick.

Lena Headey, known for her roles as the semi-eponymous lead in the short lived Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and more recently as the sinister and incestuous Cersei Lannister on HBO's Game of Thrones, is also enjoyable as the menacing Ma-Ma.

Travis and his cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle have put an effectively dingy atmosphere on screen, and frame shots so that they’re cloaked in shadows—no doubt to hide some of the deficiencies in this meagerly budgeted production. The director relishes a little too heavily in computer-aided super-slo-mo shots during some of the, drug-fueled, action. The hallucinatory scenes, aglow in boosted colors and glossy smoothness, are the closest the film comes to being "artsy". The slow-mo, which employs CG to slow down time to a near stopped state and often extrapolate the bloody gore frequently flying at the camera lens, usually only draws more attention to the cost-cut nature of the production. The CG makes things look a little too fake at times. But overall, the action is intense and well done, and the low-fi, bass-heavy, score by composer Paul Leonard-Morgan is pretty wicked, which sure makes Dredd an enjoyable time.

Come on people, this thing does not deserve to bomb as hard as it is. Sure, maybe it’s not exactly faithful to the original comic by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, but Dredd 3D is better than the shitty Sly Stallone version of the story (which I like to call Demolition Man 2, because that’s what it is).

Go see it—because, dammit, I actually want a sequel to this, and that’s not likely to happen unless it makes some money. Reward films willing to go for the "Hard R" rating. Rewards films that are even remotely like the original Robocop.

Grade: 7/10

'Dredd 3D'
Directed by: Pete Travis
Screenplay by: Alex Garland
Starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thrilby and Lena Headey
Rating: R
Runtime: 96 minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate/DNA Films