Dredd is a 2012 action film set in a violent, futuristic city where the police have the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner
We live in the new Golden Age of Comics, where our favourite characters are being brought to life three or four times a year, an age where the sequel reigns supreme and the money’s in the masks. I absolutely bloody love it. I really do. Naturally, however, with the MCU and DC-whatever-the-hell-that-trash-fire-is reigning supreme in the box office, we’ve seen plenty of gems come and go firmly under the radar. One of the best examples is Dredd, 2012’s rock-solid, Raid-inspired 2000 AD adaptation. As well as being ridiculously true to the source material, it’s also one heck of an action movie. As a new writer here at TMI, I figured it’d be good to introduce myself through the medium of Judge Dredd (as is ALWAYS the case with my introductions), so please enjoy my celebration … of the law.
From page to screen
Dredd, more than almost any other comic book adaptation I’ve seen (and I’ve seen literally all of them), lives and dies by the Good Book – that book being 2000 AD. The screenplay, courtesy of sci-fi mastermind Alex Garland (Annihilation), is obviously the product of a proud squaxx. Whilst the more obvious signposts of source-material devotion, such as meta references, aren’t relied on too heavily, Garland manages to capture the spirit of the character in a bottle. This is seen no better than in the opening shot.
It’s your general establishing shot/kick-ass motorcycle chase. However, it manages to really get to the heart of what the source material is all about. The deadpan writing comes into immediate play here, with the eponymous character’s uncompromising nature being apparent throughout. I also love the little reference to “drokk” on the back of one of the perp’s jackets, which is just a little extra in the way of nerd candy. With this, we are also introduced to the fourth star of Dredd: the violence. I’ll get more into the aesthetics of it later, but needless to say, director Pete Travis didn’t pull any punches, quite literally. Mate, the broken jaws speak for themselves … well, if they could.
Urban: Outfitted
Of course, as someone must have said at some point: “A good script can’t save a bad performance, but a good performance can save a bad script.” Here, we have a great script, but that means nada if the actors aren’t up to scratch, though that is not a problem here. In what I can only describe as a career-defining performance and one of the best the decade has seen so far, Karl Urban lives and breathes life into the titular Judge. Similar to Ryan Reynolds and his Deadpool character, there is so much obvious passion in Urban’s portrayal – it’s exactly how I imagined him.
Every moment Urban’s on screen, he commands it, with a presence befitting of the character. He gets every slight movement, every vocal cue, every facial twitch so, so right, with the concrete snarl etched into his face, as we’ve seen hundreds of times in the comics. He really does make the film and elevates the already-great script to something any comic lover would dream of. He’s so faithful that fans will instantly love him, and yet is such a great actor anyway that any old nonscrot’ll love him too.
He’s supported by two great women, with Olivia Thirlby’s rookie Judge Anderson in many ways a moral conscience of the film, and Lena Headey’s sadistic crime lord Ma-Ma, the exact opposite. While neither, in my opinion, come close to Urban’s scene-stealing performance, they’re really refreshing in terms of gender representation in action movies. Of course, Dredd’s the same take-no-crap, macho bastard we know and love, but Headey’s character is responsible for much of the gritty violence in the film, and is [bg_collapse view=”link-inline” color=”#c91010″ expand_text=”Show SPOILER” collapse_text=”Close” ]met with a fittingly violent death.[/bg_collapse]
Then there’s the look. In terms of set and character design, Dredd has plenty of love from the production crew. Considering the plastic awfulness of Stallone’s ’95 outing, what we get here is borderline extraordinary; proper, chunky, leather, heavy metal. Elements of sci-fi and the post-apocalyptic combine in grimey high-rise buildings and holographic shop signs. Much like Blade Runner to a lesser degree, Mega City One is a concrete beast, a hive of vulgarity and violence, and is represented as such.
“Her trademark was violence”
Probably Dredd’s greatest asset, however, if not Urban’s lead performance, is the masterful work done in the visual departments. As much as you can say about the film being a well-acted, well-written piece of cinema, you can’t tell the whole story without mentioning what a treat it is for the eyes.
With little in his filmography before this, director Pete Travis makes a helluvan artistic statement with this entry. While rewatching this movie recently for the purposes of this review, my notes in the directorial department feature words like “twisted, frantic and batsh*t insane” – this should give you an idea of what we’re working with. The cinematography is as fast-paced as the action, pre-empting the insanity of Fury Road by a good few years, and really accustoms itself to the story. This is something you can relatively expect from any great movie. What makes Dredd so exceptional, however, is the more extreme ends it goes to.
So, for those not in the know, one of the movie’s major plot points is the manufacture and distribution of ‘slo-mo,’ this hallucinogenic dealio that slows down the user’s perception of time, as well as making everything SUPER PRETTY AND SHINY. Indeed, in the many scenes where slo-mo is used, the visuals kick up a notch, with the saturation and contrast in the colours ramped and a glittery gleam over everything.
As you can see above, this pairs particularly nicely with the moments of ultra-violence Dredd offers in spades. The action is brutal, much like its plotline, mirroring Gareth Evans’ 2011 Indonesian martial-arts flick The Raid. While the choreography of the latter is more precise and stunning to watch, the sheer kick-the-door-down force in Dredd will have an action fan giddy at every gut-wrenching punch. Bodies are dropped throughout the runtime, all in a pool of blood, blood … and more blood.
Judgement Time
With Dredd, 2000 AD fans the world over were treated to something that such a fanbase deserves – a nigh-on perfect comic-book adaptation. There is nothing but passion in this project, with the beloved source material being brought to life with enough twists to keep it fresh. Urban’s performance is the epitome of what it means to bring this kind of character to life and the visuals are nothing less than astounding. It’s totally brutal, though, in a way that many films nowadays are not. This all comes together, in my opinion, to prove that, in an age where superhero film roam almost unchecked across the box office wasteland, Dredd will always be the law.