… he’s more than just a grumpy chin: he’s stoic, relentless, and hiding a tiny twisted streak of dark humour …
I really like the Dredd movie.
I mean, I really like it. This isn’t all that surprising: I was an enthusiastic reader of 2000 AD when I was a kid, and Karl Urban has yet to disappoint (he’s Bones, he’s Eomer, he’s the best thing in DOOM the movie – he’s genre’s favourite actor!). The chatter from fans was positive despite not nearly enough people watching it at the cinema, and, let’s face it, it had to be better than the Stallone version.
Even so, watching it again at the weekend whilst tidying the living room (hyper-violence gives me the pep needed to remove the gravy stains from our coffee table) I found myself startled by how much I loved it; at the end I was grinning and nodding like a loon. I may even have bopped around the living room to the closing credits. I had to ask myself, what is it? Why does this film please me so much?
There is a lot to like. Visually, it is spot on. What I remember mainly of the Stallone version is that at first I liked the way it looked – Mega-City One looks crazy and you can see that it came from the comics – but as the film progresses it rapidly becomes less and less 2000 AD and more Stallone’s Latest Vehicle, until you realise it is in fact unwatchable pap. Dredd seems to work in reverse: at first it feels too real, too gritty, like this is New York of a few years from now, but as you follow Dredd on the opening bike chase and into one of the blocks the atmosphere of 2000 AD settles over you like a sooty cloud. Everything is soaked in sickly sodium yellow, and the Judges’ uniforms are dusty, lived in. By the time Dredd is striding through the precinct informing Control of “bodies for resyk” you are in that world.
… we quickly discover that actually, this Judge can have you helpless and wetting yourself in seconds.
The soundtrack! The soundtrack. I am in legitimate love with the soundtrack. I am listening to it when I’m writing and it’s fabulous: frenetic, doom-laden, anxious, ass-kicking. It’s pitch perfect, as important to the film as its visuals. Action sequences are cooler with it, more frightening, and the scenes where certain people take a dive from the top of Peach Trees are more beautiful, more horrifying. And I love Urban’s Dredd too. I expected to, really, but he’s more than just a grumpy chin – he’s stoic, relentless, and hiding a tiny twisted streak of dark humour deep within himself (very deep). I love LOVE that after he pushes Ma Ma off the balcony his only comment is “Yeah.” Because that’s all you need with Dredd.
But I suspect what lifted this movie above my usual general appreciation for a good, ass-kicking action movie was the female characters. The women in this film are great, and you know it makes me a little bit sad to say it, but that’s actually pretty rare in films at the moment. Yeah sure, you might get the token woman, and she might even be quite good at punching (usually kicking) people, but most of the time we will be viewing her through the Male Gaze – she will have her midriff showing or wear latex – and she will partially exist as a reward for the much more important male character.
…Ma Ma, played with nearly uncomfortable intensity by Lena Headey.
In Dredd, we have Judge Anderson. This is her story, in fact – a rookie with questionable grades out for a final assessment – and we see her go through the wringer, but this is the thing: she is every bit as tough as Dredd. Olivia Thirlby has a sort of ethereal quality that initially gives Anderson a sense of vulnerability but we quickly discover that actually, this Judge can have you helpless and wetting yourself in seconds. The scenes where she a) demonstrates exactly how much control she has in the mind of the scummy perp and b) stands up to Dredd and makes her own Judgement made me cheer. At no point does Dredd patronise her, and at no point does the possibility of romance raise its perfumed head – my god, how refreshing is that? Not that I have a problem with romance, not at all, but so often it is a foregone conclusion.
And there’s Ma Ma, played with nearly uncomfortable intensity by Lena Headey. Like Dredd, she isn’t overburdened with lines but she manages to convey menace with just a certain way of standing, a particular frown. She is in charge of a lot of men who appear to respect her, or are terrified of her, and sex doesn’t seem to come into it at all. She isn’t using her sexiness as a weapon; she isn’t played for sexiness at all, in fact. She is just a serious Bad Ass, and one who will Fuck You Up.
…she’s just doing her job, and doing it well.
Even the minor female characters get better treatment than usual. The woman who lets Dredd and Anderson into her apartment is brave and no-nonsense, doing what she needs to in order to save her family (for what good it does her). The Chief Judge is a woman, too, and although you sense she probably has a better idea of what is going on than Dredd has, this isn’t played as conniving or in any way negative: she’s just doing her job, and doing it well.
This is a great film, and it’s elevated further for me because at no stage did I experience that slight sinking feeling I often get these days when watching a movie: when a topless scene appears for no other reason than it’s assumed the audience is both male and straight; when a woman appears only as a prize or wish fulfilment; when whole chunks of the plot suddenly become very predictable because Romance. Dredd has female characters that are actually fully realised people, with interests and goals that do not revolve around a penis. I liked that. I loved that. And I loved everything else about it too.
(Originally posted at http://sennydreadful.co.uk/)
httpvh://youtu.be/qVIba2N6MTA
Great review and one I wholeheartedly agree with. Dredd was easily the best movie of last year and as one of the best comic book to movie adaptations ever made, it’ll take some beating!
Great article, and again it makes me wonder why this film bombed so badly and had such appallingly skewed demographics during its theatrical run (i.e. mostly blokes). Such a pity, because this had unsanitised action and women treated as equals—both extremely rare in modern cinema (not least in Hollywood-style hero vehicles). Although we end up with a fantastic one-off, it’s such a shame we won’t see more of this Mega-City One and this Anderson.
We might do! And we might get a Rogue Trooper film of equal calibre! … I can dream.
Well, simply put, 2000AD has never taken hold anywhere but the UK. And in the UK it didn’t quite bomb – in fact it went straight to #1 in the charts, was the first 18-rated movie to do so for a year or two, and the DVD release sold out in a large number of stores. It did THAT well.
But do you want to know why it ‘bombed’? It’s not so much Dredd. It’s the fact it was an 18-rated comic book movie with an incredibly limited 2D release. I think it was something like 30 cinemas out of the hundreds in the UK had it in 2D, and that distribution was far from even. Basically, if you wanted to see it, you had to see it in 3D. I’m not sure how far this extended to the US, but I can’t imagine it being too dissimilar.
This was certainly an issue for us – my partner physically can’t see 3D, and 2D showings were incredibly rare. Hopefully the DVD sales are being pushed up by those of us who didn’t get to the cinema.
I agree with everything you have to say. It’s disappointing that out of the 6 friends I attended a viewing with, I was the only one who liked it. But then, I’m the only comics geek in the bunch, so I don’t know if perhaps that has something to do with the skewed demographics…
That’s strange. I felt like it gave non-2000AD fans an elegant and subtle hand-holding introduction to Mega-City One. You should explain to your philistine chums that they are watching their grandchildren’s future.
You need new friends.
As a long time 2000AD fan I was expecting this to be good especially after the grud awful Stallone film, I was not disappointed at all, it’s just what a Dredd movie should be. It’s such a shame that I’ve had to explain to so many friends that it’s not a Stallone remake, that film is the albatross around the neck of new film. Great review,
its just a shame more people didn’t get to see it at the cinema but it’s going to be a cult movie that will be with us for a very long time I’m sure.
I love “grud awful”. I’m going to own that one.
Thank you for the kind comments, everyone! 🙂
I think in terms of comic book adaptations it’s got to be one of the best – it might not reflect all the extremes of 2000AD, but it gets the atmosphere exactly right. In fact I’m getting the urge to watch it again….
As I’ve stated on my blog, I have to disagree with the idea that it fits the ‘tone’ of 2000AD. Well, it does and doesn’t.
Visually? No. Not in the slightest. In 2000AD (and the current IDW Judge Dredd series), Mega-City One is a bright, colourful, over-the-top sci-fi city. The blocks are crammed together with ridiculous names, there’s highways at impossible heights, and so on. The Stallone movie, from start to finish, captured the visual design and the aesthetics of the world perfectly. It had more nods to 2000AD stories than Dredd did (ABC Warriors, Judge Rico, etc.)
As a big Anderson fan, I also felt Thirlby just never hit any of Anderson’s notes. If you read any of her stories (well, let me stop myself there – I’ve not yet read a Cadet Anderson story, but those are more recent and are fewer in number), then you’ll see she’s an empowered, witty and strong woman. She’s one of the best Psi-Judges, she’s got this rapport with Dredd that no other character will ever have, she cracks jokes, she’ll insult perps, but she’ll also go out of her way to protect the vulnerable (particularly children – the Wonderwall story is one of my favourite stories she’s done), yet there’s always an undercurrent of discontent with being a judge. Not one aspect of that, IMHO, was present in the film… except for *that* scene (you’ll know which I mean). I just didn’t see Thirlby’s Anderson as being able to confront the Dark Judges, to have the strength and the will to contain them and so on.
So, for me, the look of “Mega-City One” (with its bloody ridiculous mix of old vehicles and spruced-up custom bikes) never worked in this film. It was too much of a mix of current architecture and near-future, not enough of the utterly bonkers Sue Perkins Blocks and so on. That took me out of the film a bit, and so did the way Anderson just wasn’t Anderson.
I don’t think it was ever a bad film. I just never felt it was Dredd. There was too little of the humour, too little of the craziness, too much of the slo-mo effect – well, too much emphasis on effects in general – and I just never really got to grips with it as a Dredd film. As an action movie, it’s probably up there somewhere. But, for me at least, it just wasn’t Dredd. A true, true, true Dredd movie would be somewhere between the two we’ve had so far. Take the visuals and design of the first and mix it with the tone of the second? You’re probably most of the way there already.
I would have liked to see more nods to 2000 AD but then again that might have alienated non-fans. I think it’s a good thing that everything met IRL half way – the Judge uniforms and Lawmasters less glamorous and more functional, the blocks more familiar. If things had been closer to the comic it might have looked kind of jarring and less immersive… maybe like Idiocracy. I also empathise with your protectiveness of Anderson but as you say, she’s a cadet here and it was also made clear that Psi-judges aren’t yet a thing. So she’s still struggling with the mutie label as well as trying to prove herself as a Judge. And for a cadet, she’s massively hardcore, self assured and in touch with her own principles and morals. It would be good to see her on screen in her more mature incarnation, playing out the Shamballa story or whatever, but this wasn’t the time to do that… also, thanks tons for your thoughts! I will have a look at your blog.
It seems pretty clear that Dredd is the sort of movie that will, in years to come, end up in that basket of Moviedrome ‘genre movies that become cults’. There was an insane amount of behind the camera talent involved and its shows.
Of course it was doomed when critics like Kermode abrogated their professional responsibility to assess the movie by prefering instead to talk about the Stallone film and and comicbooks as source material.
Dredd was a fantastic movie with real hidden depths (small moments like how Anderson’s reactions to shooting an injured man change by the time of the final scene, the positioning in the lifts) in a myriad of mirrored moments.
As for people who say it lacked the humour of the strips – the hobo’s sign? the hobo’s fate? the only time we see American symbols (after Dredd has gone too far in interrogation). the ‘admirable’. The sly humour is there in spades, the problems lies with you.
The best thing about Dredd is it gets better the more you watch it. I went and saw it here in Oz on release date with a slowly chanting ‘please-don’t-suck-please-don’t-suck’ running through me and left feeling ‘hey, that didn’t suck’ but not much else.
Seeing it again a week later allowed me to pick up on all the smaller details; the way Anderson does not fire a single shot in the drug bust and the way Urban acted a LOT using only his body. Still, it wasn’t till about the 4th viewing when I finally had the Bluray where I picked up the subtle joke with the music the Tek was listening to.
Why do people like this movie so much? Probably because things like that in the background are always there. On now at least my 10th viewing I have started watching some of the nameless and dialogless goons MaMa owns and even they have mini character arcs.
If there is a problem with this movie is that it is shamelessly graphic. I have no problem with it but are very aware when I try to recommend this movie to friends that many of them do.
Still, word of mouth kids. Talk this baby up. You know you want to 😀
I was enjoying it anyway, then I saw the Chopper graffiti and that enjoyment went to love and respect! Even ma-ma can’t stop Marlon tagging Peach Trees!
Ah, I was watching the skies really hoping he would make a cameo appearance. Played by Yahoo Serious, maybe.
I totally agree. Along with Killing them Softly this was the critically underappreciated gem of last year. Seeing it in cinemas, the 3D was actually good (!) and added to the story. Watching it again on DVD with friends i could see that i wasn’t alone in loving this and we were all grinning like loons by the end.