A GRIPPING CHARACTER STUDY FUELED BY ACTION AND VIOLENCE.→ JULY 12, 2012 The 1995 adaptation of Judge Dredd didn’t get it right. Not even close. The rusted, scum-riddled streets of Mega City One – a dying metropolis, addled with violent crime – were too clean, too stagey. The plot too convoluted. And Stallone’s performance as the grim lawgiver was too heroic. (He even took his helmet off.) Even one of the co-creators of Dredd, John Wagner, dismissed the entire project, saying that “Judge Dredd wasn’t really Judge Dredd." But thankfully, the failure of that project has led to a movie which really is Judge Dredd.
If you’re unacquainted with either the dismal Stallone adaptation or the classic 2000AD comic series, Judge Dredd is set in a dystopian future, in which most of America has become an irradiated wasteland. But humanity still survives. On the East Coast lies Mega City One – a vast walled metropolis, swollen with 400m citizens. It’s a place where crime has become the norm.
In this broken future, fallen to the gangs and scum, the only hope of order lies with The Judges – individuals invested with the power to sentence and punish criminals on the spot. Dredd is one of the fiercest, most exacting of this new type of law enforcement.
Dredd never labours its set up. Shot in South Africa, Mega City One has a bleached feel to it – there’s an oppressive heat, almost as if the entire landscape is still baking from the fallout. The film achieves this effective sense of place largely without elaborate special effects. It’s probably a side-effect of the film’s relatively modest budget, but it turns out to be a major strength. As it’s still recognisably a real city – like Nolan’s composite Gotham – it feels like a very real, nightmarish projection of our reality, rather than a distant world coldly fabricated by computer imagery.
“
While director Pete Travis never captures the spectacular, Dredd, at just over 90 minutes, feels like one concentrated, concussive action sequence.
The skyline of Mega City One is dominated by City Blocks – gigantic 200 storey apartment complexes, housing the poor and warring gang factions. It’s within one of these blocks – the rather idyllic sounding Peach Trees – that almost all of the film takes place. Dredd investigates a routine triple homicide with Anderson, a cadet who narrowly failed her examination to become a judge, yet is being given a second chance thanks to her prodigious psychic abilities. Dredd and Anderson quickly apprehend the murderer, but are locked within Peach Trees by Ma-Ma, the psychotic prostitute-turned-overlord of the building, since she fears what the prisoner might reveal under interrogation. To escape, Dredd must journey from floor number 1 to floor number 200, and arrest Ma-Ma in the process. As Dredd would laconically put it: it’s a drug bust.
This simple, elegant conceit is one of the film’s greatest strength. Those who attend summer blockbusters for spectacle might be slightly underwhelmed, as the film features nothing you haven’t seen before. There’s no single standout action set-piece, and consequently Dredd will suffer comparisons with jaw-dropping action film The Raid, with which it shares a similar plot structure. And while director Pete Travis never captures the spectacular, Dredd, at just over 90 minutes, feels like one concentrated, concussive action sequence.
Run Dredd, Run!
It’s worth noting that while the action isn't spectacular in Dredd, the violence most certainly is. Criminals collide with concrete at high-velocity; faces are torn apart by bullets in slow-motion; people are flayed alive. It’s tough going. At one point, blood from an exit-wound splashes over the edge of the frame, almost as if it’s trying to splatter the audience. The 3D, for once, is thematically appropriate – the violence literally being thrust into your face. And it's justified – the world of Mega City One needs to be that brutal in order to legitimate the extreme form of law enforcement represented by Judge Dredd.
“
People collide with concrete at high-velocity; faces are torn apart by bullets in slow-motion; people are flayed alive. It’s tough going.
And Karl Urban makes for a great Dredd. He’s grizzled and terse and unstoppable. This is also down to Alex Garland’s smart and source material-sensitive script. The temptation would be to punctuate key moments of action with witty one-liners and sardonic quips, but he avoids this betrayal of the character. Dredd enforces the law. He’s just doing his job, and doing it well is likely to result in a grimace, not a smug pun. It’s refreshing, and makes the character all the more intimidating.
The decision to leave the helmet on for the entire film works – the character of Dredd is held purposely at a distance from the audience. We see him very much from the perspective of Anderson: a forbidding examiner. When Dredd first meets Anderson, she’s asked to read Dredd’s mind to demonstrate the extent of her impressive psychic abilities. Her description broadly sketches out the character of Dredd, but as she is about to unearth his hidden motivations, the Chief Justice cuts her off. It hints at a deeper character that you know is there, but it’s intentionally kept obscured. The decision to keep the helmet on for the entire movie underscores his character. You know there’s something there, but it's ambiguous; purposely obscured.
Lena Headey as Ma-Ma.
In contrast, Anderson – played by the likeable Olivia Thirlby – is very much the sympathetic, emotional counterpoint to Dredd’s remoteness. She’s not just along for the ride, however, meting out her own form of justice, and using her psychic abilities in some interesting ways. Lena Headey – best known for her role as Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones – plays Ma-Ma the disfigured prostitute who clawed her way to be the uncontested boss of Peach Trees. She’s a potent antagonist for Dredd, but ultimately she’s really just there to set the plot in motion.
In many ways, Dredd feels like an action film from a simpler time, like Assault on Precinct 13 or Escape From New York. It doesn’t break the bank with escalating set-pieces, to the point where the character is lost amidst the explosions. Dredd is a character study, primarily, one fuelled by violence and action, and we can’t think of a better way to re-introduce this character to cinema audiences.
BECOME A FAN OF IGN
THE VERDICT
Karl Urban dons the helmet for this latest take on the Judge Dredd story - a gripping character study that's fueled by action and violence.
