Dredd

Dredd is the new film directed by Pete Travis and stars Karl Urban, Olivia Thirbly, Lena Heady, and Wood Harris. Remakes seem to be all the rage in Hollywood right now and I’m still not convinced that’s a good thing.  So when it comes to remaking an almost 20 year old sci-fi film that was mediocre when it was made, it’s hard to feel very optimistic.

I guess its important to clarify that the word remake isn’t technically accurate.  Judge Dredd, the original film which came out back in 1995 and stars Sylvester Stallone, has a completely different plot and nothing about the new film implies that it is a reboot or origin story. An interesting thing about the 1995 film is that even though in the comics Judge Dredd is never seen without his helmet/mask, in the film Stallone did indeed take off his mask.  The rumor is that the part was initially offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger but he declined due to not wanting to cover his face for the majority of the film.  As for the new Dredd, it really is a reboot as no attention is paid to the previous film and there are already talks of a sequel and even a trilogy if the films are successful enough.

The character of Judge Dredd originally comes from the 2000 AD comic strip named Judge Dredd.  The setting takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where the population has swelled and chaos reigns.  Judges are a special type of law enforcement officer with the authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner.  The feasibility is not totally crazy.  At one point in the film it’s noted that crime is so rampant that Judges are only able to respond to something like 6% of reported crimes.  The Judges have been given this power because resources are so limited that things like trials and formal sentencing just aren’t going to happen because the priority is to focus resources on cleaning the streets.

Dredd centers in on Judge Dredd being tasked with taking a potential new recruit, Olivia Thirbly, out on a field test to see if she has what it takes to be a Judge.  They choose a triple homicide at the giant city block named Peach Trees.  City blocks are megastructures in which tens of thousands of people live.  Things quickly turn south after the duo arrive at the city block.  Lena Heady serves as the crime boss who controls the production and sale of the new street drug Slo-Mo which makes time appear to pass at 1/100th normal speed.

The film was surprisingly good.  All of the leads were fantastic.  I’m sure Karl Urban didn’t really have much of a choice, but I applaud the decision to keep the character masked.  All the talk over the recent years about a possible Halo  movie seem to exemplify the mask debate.  A lot of the problems related to the Halo  movie not starting production yet seem to stem from the difficulty of having the main character masked and how it makes it extremely difficult to convey any sort of dynamic emotional range.  Judge Dredd lucks out a little because he does have a small portion of his face visible, but to Karl Urban’s credit a permanently masked Judge Dredd performance turned out to be very successful.

Surprisingly, the 3D version actually turned out to be visually impressive.  This was probably largely due to the Slo-Mo scenes where the slowed time in conjunction with the 3D provided some pretty cool looking scenes.  Overall it was a solid film and I hope we see some sequels down the road.