Monday, October 1, 2012

Why Dredd is Awesome

Introduction: The Raid was a f*cking great movie. It was the story of police officers facing off against a building full of criminals. The latest film, Dredd, is the exact same thing. I'm not saying anything extreme like Dredd being as good or being a rip-off. I just wanted to shamelessly promote my site even further. No, Dredd  is a different beast. Raid was a film that highlighted kung-fu and action over story and characters. Dredd highlights graphic violence and subtlety. Dredd is based off a comic book where radiation has ravaged the Earth and now Mega Cities contain large densities of the population. The great idea sprung from this is that people known as Judges roam the city as combined forms of judge, jury, and executioner to deal with all the violence. Gotta think about the budget.

Judge Dredd: Dredd isn't a man. He has no face. He's the motherf*cking law. He's a force of unemotional and unyielding justice that will exterminate the vermin of the city as if they were actual vermin. He treats the scenario of the movie as just another stroll in the blood soaked park. And yet the movie still manages to give him character development. See, he has been paired with a compassionate rookie and has been tasked with testing her skills. Their are subtle hints throughout the film of his character growth. One such scene involves 2 kids threatening to shoot him. He just says he'll either imprison them for life or end them, but then something surprising happens; he does neither. He simply stuns them. It's small but you can still see it. This shows that their is more to Dredd then just being the law. Dredd is in fact a man trying to be the law. In the end, he passes the rookie thus showing that law is more than just the rules, it's also mercy and sympathy.

Judge Anderson: Judge Anderson is the compassionate rookie. She has yet to be a full fledged Judge because of her emotion. One way the film portrays her as not being an unemotional force like the other Judges is that she doesn't wear a helmet to hide her face. Why doesn't she wear a helmet? Because it interferes with her telepathy. Yupp, she's psychic, and it's awesome. It makes her less psyched about dealing death to people but makes her a better judge of character. Ha! Puns! Because of this she is the first person to note something more behind the hidden face of Dredd. Plus she's some sexy badass.

Ma-Ma: She is the head criminal of the building Dredd and Anderson are stuck in. She. Is. Ruthless. She allows rape, torture, and even skinning. Their is literally a scene where she sets up a row of Gatling guns and mows down an entire floor in her own building. Men, women, and children just f*cking mowed down. If you've ever seen a Gatling gun in action you'd know that it fires off so many rounds it actually looks like a f*cking laser. She even blinded a guy just so she could implant cybernetic eyes in his face and then use him for her own gains. Interestingly though, she creates a new drug known as Slo-Mo that actually looks pretty beautiful. We starting a new paragraph for that? We are? Sweeeeet.

Drug Abuse: Slo-Mo is a drug that causes the user to perceive time as 1% it's normal speed. The first time we see Ma-Ma use it she is taking a bath and playing with the water like a child, but the effects from the drug make the water flying through the air look like nebulae and stars floating through space like glistening diamonds. It's breathtaking. Sadly, the applications of such a drug in an action sense are never realized (ie martial artist using the drug to do Matrix-y stuff). Even though the drug's effects would make anyone an addict it's treated like the plague and I wish they could have gone more in-depth into it and possibly even compare it to today's drugs.

Conclusion: This film is a rare case when a reboot is done right. It's also a good case of a first film in a planned trilogy (unlike Prometheus and Amazing Spiderman). It introduces a lot of interesting things but doesn't fully dive in or obscure a lot of the plot. Everything that needed to be explained about the immediate plot was explained and everything that wasn't can now be built upon in future installments. Sadly, the film is not doing well in the box office. This is because of a lack of marketing (plus Sylvestor Stallone's version) so I highly recommend you go out and see it. Support Your Future Law Enforcement.